Oh, To Be A Bad Birdwatcher

(though April’s not yet there…)

OK, let me ask you a question:

What colour’s a duck?

I am quite sure your answer wasn’t one obvious word only (“yellow“), am I right?
So let me ask you another question:

Would you say watching birds is an enjoyable form of pastime?

There’s a nice English journalist who says everybody can be a birdwatcher. A bad birdwatcher, that is, which IMHO is the more natural, satisfying way of observing these lovely creatures.

According to Simon Barnes, a bad birdwatcher is anyone who will stop for a bird and look at it, trying to guess, remember or simply determine which bird it could be, but most of all, simply enjoying the opportunity to watch it exist.

Bad birdwatchers don’t make detailed lists of birds seen, nor are we able to guess the different life phases of a sea gull from the colour of its plumage, we don’t own any expensive equipment and are mostly not able to pay for special birdwatching holidays in Africa.

I guess we agree then that most birdwatchers are bad birdwatchers.

Ever wondered how to become a bad birdwatcher?

I think the first step is to ask yourself another question:

Do I generally like birds/am I neutral about them or do I think they are dangerous little (and not so little) beasts, cf. Hitchcock and EU reports on bird flu?

Well, if you can imagine watching a bird and not being afraid of it or constantly irritated by its song, maybe you could be a birdwatcher. The next step is to determine whether you might find all birds interesting, not just those lovely, fluffy and colourful little things, but also the ugly and the dirty among them?

(Actually, I am not quite honest with you there… I do hate having to watch flamingos, for example. Luckily, one can only see them in zoos, mostly in the entrance area, so I just look away. But that’s because I find them so kitschy. I prefer ravens…)

Now, if you have just discovered you can and want to be a bad birdwatcher, we can make the next logical step, too.
You’ll probably agree that even without binoculars we do get to see many different birds on most days, so what we need first are sources of information to help us determine which bird we have just seen. (I don’t know about you but I grew up without being able to recognize the most important ones … A (male) blackbird and a (male and female) blue tit, yes, a duck, a stork and a sea gull, but that was all.)

We two decided to use a book, a Bestimmungsbuch => a field guide with lovely pictures to help us search for the names. We learnt about most birds from our German book, but certain problems turned up when we went to Sweden that summer.
See, the thing about birdwatchers is, they love to communicate and share the finds. But what if the nice Swedish guy telling you about the Falco Peregrinus (which, by coincidence, you can instantly recognize as Peregrine, Wanderfalke) you are both watching then starts to use some other Latin or even Swedish words for other birds in your vicinity?
Well, we decided we needed a Swedish field book as well. And an English one. So we got them as well and though ourselves well armed for international contacts, which was the fact until we started to explore the avifauna in Alsace, France. Most people there will speak German but some won’t. A few weeks ago, a nice birdwatcher started telling us something in French. Now, usually, we would signalize we don’t understand a word but he did use the expression “egret blanche” in the end, so we said Ja and my husband showed him the video he was taking of the mentioned great white egret.
Which is why the French guy then continued talking to us for some time, until we finally got the opportunity to tell him we didn’t speak any French. I even said “Entschuldigung” in the end… Well, I do hope my first French course is going to take place

useful friends

Another thing we soon thought we needed (and you are certainly going to agree the moment you feel happy watching birds nearby) were binoculars. We’ve got quite a few right now and I am even a happy owner of two pairs of Lady Binoculars – they were my hubby’s present and they will fit into a typical handbag, as you can see by means of comparison here:

every woman needs them

I guess I needn’t tell you how we find out where to go birdwatching… The German expression to google is Vogelschutzgebiet (bird protection area). And once you’ve found out some of these (they should be in your vicinity, for climate’s sake) you simply go there every now and then. That must be the best way to discover which birds live in your area most of the time, which birds fly away to winter somewhere else, which birds will visit your place to winter here, you can also learn to distinguish between male and female (or young male) or breeding and winter plumage, you can watch them peck and learn about different beak forms, if you feel like it.

And if you want to distinguish between some less conspicuous birds or guess their presence, you’ll have to learn their songs, because they will hide from you far above. We haven’t done songs yet, though, there’s enough pleasure to be had from watching what can be seen.

You see, it’s a very exciting hobby, bad birdwatching is.