NotebookBirdwatching This article is more than 6 years oldTwitchers and groppers: when birdwatching turns ugly
This article is more than 6 years oldPatrick BarkhamWatching rare birds is a joyful way to commune with nature. But obsession can spill over into the entitled aggression we see in hunters and shootersLike many people, I’ve got an unfinished novel in a drawer. It features a serial-killing twitcher, and is not worth me – let alone any reader – finishing. I was reminded of my anti-hero when watching video of a confrontation between a gaggle of obsessive birdwatchers and two nature reserve wardens.
The twitchers were pursuing a Pallas’s grasshopper warbler, a “little brown job” that should be en route to India. Somehow, this one had ended up lost and exhausted on the Norfolk coast. More than 50 twitchers jumped into a private field to bag their trophy – a good photograph – and someone damaged the cattle fence. So the wardens shooed the twitchers away and were harangued for it.
These overwhelmingly male gatherings remind me of paparazzi flocks I’ve encountered. Like a reluctant celebrity, the Pallas’s “gropper” (twitchers have their own language, as well as paparazzi-style ripping yarns about this trip or that shot) was skulking in the bushes. One twitcher demanded that the wardens provide “an organised flush” – to scare the bird into view – so everyone could get a photograph. “Sort it out, and everyone goes home,” the female warden was told, as if she were a publicist for a celeb “fronting up” for pics in return for peace.
Several twitchers seemed particularly antagonised by the wealthy Holkham estate, which runs this nature reserve, and Holkham was accused of being “greedy” and “shits”. “Here’s a tenner for Holkham estate if you let me in the field now,” shouted one. A generous interpretation is that some twitchers are impoverished class warriors, and such unpleasant scenes wouldn’t occur on an RSPB reserve.
I’ve pursued a self-indulgent chase to see every British butterfly species, so I understand obsession. I can’t criticise twitchers on the basis of carbon emissions either. For the majority, watching rare birds is a joyful way to commune with nature. They treat wildlife – and wardens – respectfully and pump money into rural economies.
These responsible birders might wonder why I’m drawing attention to a trivial confrontation when far worse crimes are committed daily, with the slaughter of rare raptors such as the hen harrier. But in this instance some of these twitchers gave an uncomfortable impersonation of the entitled behaviour we see from many fox-hunters and grouse-shooters.
Watching wildlife may eventually supersede leisure shooting. If it does, tenner-brandishing twitchers should remember these lines from Animal Farm: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
This hero needs help
There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies / But best of all was the warm thick slobber / Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water.
So wrote Seamus Heaney, inspired by his childhood by Lough Beg. Fairly soon, birders won’t be able to enjoy this wetland’s inspirational peace or its wigeon, whooper swans and golden plover. Northern Ireland’s government is building a dual carriageway through part of the UK’s largest freshwater “special protection area”.
No conservation charities except Friends of the Earth are shouting about this ecological and cultural desecration. A local birder, Chris Murphy, is convinced the route (there are alternatives) is illegal. He’s single-handedly seeking to stop it in the supreme court. He’s also seeking a barrister to help him.
Foul play in Middlemarch
The World Cup of Books kicks off on Twitter this week. People vote for their favourite novel and in group three – the group of death – Middlemarch is scandalously trailing The Wasp Factory, The Amber Spyglass and the perennially overrated Great Gatsby. As if Brexit weren’t bad enough.
Patrick Barkham is a natural history writer for the Guardian
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJuforqmutOiqp%2BqlZp8c3yQcGasnaBkf3Z707CgrZuYmr%2B0ecarpqmolafAbq7Iq5uwmaSYtaq6xmarrqqeqHq2s8uy