What's the sickest/drunkest/sleepiest etc you insisted on going out birding? (4 Viewers)

[earlytorise]

Don't try this at home, children.

Question in title. Let's see what answers people have.

I read about the couple who had to be airlifted from one of the smaller Scillies, with intense constipation, from a diet of only Mars Bars. I suspect they kept birding up to their breaking point before giving up.

 

[Georgebirds]

A couple of weeks ago, I went birding about half an hour after being hit directly in the face by a bucket a horse threw. My nose wasn't broken (this time!) but still at the disorientatingly-painful stage, and bleeding a bit - not messily enough to make me decide against going out anyway!

 

[YuShan]

I read about the couple who had to be airlifted from one of the smaller Scillies, with intense constipation, from a diet of only Mars Bars. I suspect they kept birding up to their breaking point before giving up.

I routinely live on peanuts, M&Ms, instant noodles/pasta meals, water from streams and vitamin pills for weeks/ months on end when hiking/ camping/ birding. But I have never been ill on any of those adventures. However, I have frequently been ill when staying in towns. Probably from eating in restaurants, unclean toilets and touching stuff that other people have touched.

 

[David Ferguson]

I was driven and then more or less carried by two friends to a nearby lake to see a male White-headed Duck three weeks after having major heart surgery. The BOURC's pig-headed decision not to accept this and the other records as wild birds still annoys me.

 

[Larry Sweetland]

I guess the ultimate is to insist on going out birding after you're dead. You could do a deal with the other birders on your patch, so that when one of you is too dead to physically take yourself out birding, the others could dig you up and drag you down to your local patch if a patch tick turns up for you after you're dead. That's what we do round our way anyway. You're not taking your patch list seriously otherwise 😄

 

[YuShan]

I guess the ultimate is to insist on going out birding after you're dead. You could do a deal with the other birders on your patch, so that when one of you is too dead to physically take yourself out birding, the others could dig you up and drag you down to your local patch if a patch tick turns up for you after you're dead. That's what we do round our way anyway. You're not taking your patch list seriously otherwise 😄

I wonder if it is posthumously tickable If you get eaten by a rare vulture after you die in a birding accident?
Perhaps a new category like "heard only"?

 

[BogBean]

I routinely live on peanuts, M&Ms, instant noodles/pasta meals, water from streams and vitamin pills for weeks/ months on end when hiking/ camping/ birding. But I have never been ill on any of those adventures. However, I have frequently been ill when staying in towns. Probably from eating in restaurants, unclean toilets and touching stuff that other people have touched.

I frequently find myself in noticeably better health, after a couple of days birding, anywhere on the planet, as opposed to sitting at my desk working.
I've just come to the conclusion that sitting on our arses for long periods isn't good for us either.

 

[dantheman]

I wonder if it is posthumously tickable If you get eaten by a rare vulture after you die in a birding accident?
Perhaps a new category like "heard only"?

Surely not heard. Taste, smell, touch ... maybe. Although if you were brain dead and your synapses were no longer firing could you genuinely say you (or your body) had experienced the bird?? Maybe it would only count if there was indeed a sixth sense ...

 

[angusmcoatup]

I guess the ultimate is to insist on going out birding after you're dead. You could do a deal with the other birders on your patch, so that when one of you is too dead to physically take yourself out birding, the others could dig you up and drag you down to your local patch if a patch tick turns up for you after you're dead. That's what we do round our way anyway. You're not taking your patch list seriously otherwise 😄

I shared a car to Walney for Desert Wheatear a long time ago where I considered the possibility that one of the others had been dead for a month or so. A complex aroma I recall.

 

[David Ferguson]

I guess the ultimate is to insist on going out birding after you're dead. You could do a deal with the other birders on your patch, so that when one of you is too dead to physically take yourself out birding, the others could dig you up and drag you down to your local patch if a patch tick turns up for you after you're dead. That's what we do round our way anyway. You're not taking your patch list seriously otherwise 😄

It would be better to be cremated. The urn would be easier to carry.

 

[Larry Sweetland]

It would be better to be cremated. The urn would be easier to carry.

Good plan 👍

 

[Paul Chapman]

It would be better to be cremated. The urn would be easier to carry.

A friend is scattered on patch on Wain's Hill. He found two County firsts (Desert Wheatear & Upland Sandpiper) & is almost certainly frustrated that we have not found anything of significance since.

I have a number of tales of woe of hangovers, lack of sleep, etc but I deserved every element of my my personal discomfort.

All the best

Paul

 

[Farnboro John]

There have been cases of people dying on their way round their local patch and of course there was the unfortunate man who keeled over running for Belted Kingfisher.

I also recall a tale of a birder on the Chalice who was turning himself inside out over the rail, with his mate hauling his head up once in a while when calling out "Wilson's Petrel" etc.

I've been taken on one or two twitches for which I definitely couldn't drive due to previous socialising and one or two when I've been very very tired during long drives.

After a Scillies twitch I just had to stop and sleep in a layby (sorry crew) and got into the sleeping bag I keep in the boot. I was woken some time later by full beam headlights shining straight in my eyes and in that first waking confusion thought I'd just drifted to a halt on the road and we were all about to be wiped out by a juggernaut! I leapt into action, turning the engine back on and then, nightmarishly, finding that I couldn't get my feet to work the pedals..... I looked down and was in a sleeping bag. Eventually my heart rate returned to normal.

John

 

[jurek]

Once, during birding in India, I was so tired that I was falling asleep watching a bird, and also walking. You walk and suddenly you realize that you closed your eyes and topple forward. Later I asked 'I don't remember we saw X today'. The answer was 'But you pointed it'.

After a couple of unpleasant incidents when I lost things (mobile, bins etc), or narrowly missed crashing a car, I stopped.

One of few things which I learned during years of birding travel is to sleep well (don't lose more than one night in a row, even if you sometimes have to give up a morning to catch with your sleep) and eat well (which means stocking beforehand in sandwiches, protein bars, sliced bread or similar).

Funny, I learned this by reading how migratory birds plan their migration with stops to refuel. If they cannot build up energy resources, they don't migrate.

 

[Andy Adcock]

There have been cases of people dying on their way round their local patch and of course there was the unfortunate man who keeled over running for Belted Kingfisher.

I also recall a tale of a birder on the Chalice who was turning himself inside out over the rail, with his mate hauling his head up once in a while when calling out "Wilson's Petrel" etc.

I've been taken on one or two twitches for which I definitely couldn't drive due to previous socialising and one or two when I've been very very tired during long drives.

After a Scillies twitch I just had to stop and sleep in a layby (sorry crew) and got into the sleeping bag I keep in the boot. I was woken some time later by full beam headlights shining straight in my eyes and in that first waking confusion thought I'd just drifted to a halt on the road and we were all about to be wiped out by a juggernaut! I leapt into action, turning the engine back on and then, nightmarishly, finding that I couldn't get my feet to work the pedals..... I looked down and was in a sleeping bag. Eventually my heart rate returned to normal.

John

That could have been me and the late Alan Amery?

I was dragged out of a very accommodating barmaids bed on the Scillies, bleary eyed and very reluctantly for the Wilson's Snipe. Never was a British first so unappreciated.

 

[earlytorise]

Once, during birding in India, I was so tired that I was falling asleep watching a bird, and also walking. You walk and suddenly you realize that you closed your eyes and topple forward. Later I asked 'I don't remember we saw X today'. The answer was 'But you pointed it'.

After a couple of unpleasant incidents when I lost things (mobile, bins etc), or narrowly missed crashing a car, I stopped.

One of few things which I learned during years of birding travel is to sleep well (don't lose more than one night in a row, even if you sometimes have to give up a morning to catch with your sleep) and eat well (which means stocking beforehand in sandwiches, protein bars, sliced bread or similar).

Funny, I learned this by reading how migratory birds plan their migration with stops to refuel. If they cannot build up energy resources, they don't migrate.

I have great difficulty with jet-lag. I dread long flights for this reason.
If I had a two-week holiday on the other side of the world, in the first week I would waste many daylight hours - and that's with the 24-hour stopover (one night at a hotel there) I would treat myself, so as to slow down the time shift.
If I just flew straight from here to e.g. Panama on one ticket with no hotel breaks, it would ruin it even more.

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

I sprained my knee badly while walking in a tropical downpour and had to be carried off Mt. Kinabalu (Borneo) on a stretcher. After a day of recovery, I got back to birding with a bamboo pole as a cane, albeit on a much more limited basis. I still have that pole, although now I'm never without a good hiking pole.

I'm going back to Borneo next year, to hopefully see many of the birds I missed when I was injured.

 

[Bewick]

A pair of alpine swifts were reported close to me but I had a lot of assignment work to finish, took me until 2 AM to complete it. Even though I was exhausted I booked a train ticket for around 8 am and decided to try and get at least four hours of sleep. Spent two hours trying to sleep before giving up, got my stuff ready and took the earliest available train.

The alpine swift pair showed fantastically and I spent around 8 hours chasing the birds along the coastline. I was exhausted during latter half of the day, my eyes were bloodshot and I felt as if I could just pass out at any time. Thankfully, a birder that I had been talking to during the day offered to ride me and another birder to the train station. The other birder who also took the train saved me from missing my stop as I had fallen asleep on the journey. Did not even manage to get the gear off when I got back just collapsed on my bed and fell asleep.

 

[JWN Andrewes]

I shared a car to Walney for Desert Wheatear a long time ago where I considered the possibility that one of the others had been dead for a month or so. A complex aroma I recall.

1986? I hope I wasn't the culprit! I got a lift up from Liverpool. Can't remember who with. Pete Wheeler? Certainly had a lift off him to Walney back in the day, although it might have been for the Sandplover a couple of years later.

 

[JWN Andrewes]

I was (at least) still intoxicated on arrival at the Roch (Pembrokeshire) Baltimore Oriole, having been picked up from revelry to go see it.