Hi all,
Following on from Anthony’s posting yesterday
about “…interesting twitching articles” on the web, I thought
I would share my 20 cents, or more correctly, 50 Swedish Kronor worth of
experiences! Back in 2001 I visited Sweden
and spent about 2 weeks travelling with Katarina Stenman, a Swedish friend who
has spent a lot of time birding in Australia with me and other members
of the bird banding crew. We went to a bird observatory / banding station in
the south east of Sweden on
an island called Oland. It was here I
encountered massed twitchers twitching for the first time as shown in the
photos in the web article. As we drove into the observatory I was confronted by
about 200 - 300 birders, all with telescopes, standing in the middle of the
road and peering into the grasslands to one side. We carefully negotiated the
forest of people and scopes (they were not going to move for anyone or
anything!), parked the car, grabbed Katarina’s scope and joined them. It
turned out that everyone was watching two species euphemistically called
“beeper birds”. Apparently serious twitchers (are there any other
kinds?) in Sweden
carry a paging device so that when a “mega-rarity (I prefer the word
vagrant) turns up its presence is phoned through to a central locality and this
then triggers the pagers. Everyone rings a number to find “what and where”
and off they all go happily chasing the bird. In the case above I saw the two
species, a Citrine Wagtail and a Greater Short-toed Lark (there is a little
story I could tell about the lark and me but will save that for later!).
In 2004 along with Canberra
birdos Sue and Andrew Newbery, I was
again back in Sweden (again on
Oland) with Katarina when another “beeper
bird” – a White Stork - was located, only about 15 km from where we
were staying. Needless to say off we went, drove to the site and tramped kilometres
around the wetland it was supposed to be on. It wasn’t, so we headed back
to our accommodation. Several kms back along the road from the wetland we came
across several cars stopped in the middle of the road, doors wide open and from
memory one with its engine running but no-one in sight. We then noticed high
above us two large birds flying to the south east. Lo and behold, not one, but
two White Storks. We watched them until they disappeared over the horizon then
headed home. Sometime later the car left with the engine running arrived where
we were staying and we found it belonged to a Swedish twitcher who did what all
good twitchers do – he went and chased the birds when they flew across
the road and forgot about everything else – that’s dedication!
Several days later another “beeper bird” was located on a small
lake near a place called Hjalstaviken, so off we went again. This time the bird
was actually a feral species but still a vagrant to Sweden, the Ruddy Duck. We arrived
at the car park, which was already pretty full and started walking the kilometre
or so to the bird hide (more a slightly elevated open viewing platform) passing
people carrying telescopes walking in both directions. There were about 20
people on the platform (about the size of the open viewing area at Kelly’s
Swamp near Birragai
School) that we joined.
With all the people on it the platform was decidedly unstable and made peering
through a telescope somewhat impractical as it shook so much. However we did
manage to record the bird.
From Canberra’s
perspective, I imagine the beeper system equates to COG’s former phone
hotline and now the “Chat-line”. I’m not too sure what the
system is in the rest of Australia but at this stage don’t think it is as
good as that in Sweden (and I assume in the rest of Europe). Still things do
happen in Australia
– look at the Grey-headed Lapwing. Once word got out look at the interest
this generated. From a twitching point of view though I think I read somewhere –
Birding-Aus perhaps – that the maximum number of twitchers seen at any one
time at the Grey-headed Lapwing was around 15. I imagine by now that bird has
been seen by around 200 – 300 people, a far cry from the photos on the
web and what I have experienced. In Canberra,
we try hard but really can’t compete. However anyone who has gone out of
their way to twitch a species must admit it is fun. I know it was for the three
of us that chased up the lapwing.
So to end all this all I can say is …..GO FOR
IT and have fun. I know I do.
Mark
