It says: "Twitching is a British term, meaning "the observation of a
previously located rare bird".
If it only covers rare birds, then does that mean that a new birder,
going to great extremes to see previously located new birds that are
quite common, doesn't become a twitcher until he has run out of common
birds and starts on the rare ones?
Peter Shute
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Torr
Sent: Wednesday, 14 May 2008 4:11 PM
To: Peter Shute
Cc: Lawrie Conole; Birding Aus
Subject: re: blog for birding aus - birders behaving
badly
Wikipedia has a definition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitcher#Twitching. 5000 people at one
twitch in the UK! I think the derogatory connotations come in when some
birders seem concerned ONLY to get a new bird rather than enjoying all
birds.
2008/5/14 Peter Shute <>:
I agree, and I wonder if perhaps we automatically assume that any birder
behaving "badly" is a twitcher. Given that there's at least a little
bit of twitcher in all(?) birders it's probably a bit difficult to tell
if someone is one just by looking at them.
So perhaps this blaming of twitchers is counter productive - it may
allow badly behaved non-twitchers to continue their behaviour, perhaps
without realising. But then again, some have indicated that bad
behaviour isn't that wide spread anyway.
Personally, I've occasionally wondered if I got a bit too close or
stayed a bit long, or whether the bird flew because of me or would have
flown anyway. We can only work out the safe limits by trial and error.
How do you define a twitcher anyway? By the distance they're prepared
to go or the amount of money they're prepared to spend to see new birds?
By the amount of time they spend looking at them when they do see them?
By the time it takes them to get to a recent sighting?
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