Rarity or spectacle?

What is that you remember most about your birding? What gives you the biggest kick when you are out in the field? What do you hope for more than anything else when you are looking?  For me, all three questions are not fulfilled by rarity, but by sheer spectacle.

I've seen my fair share of rare birds, and some of them were firsts for Britain at the time. I may have travelled miles to see them. But, apart from a very few, they are but a tick on a list.

If I were to compile my Top 10 'greatest birding hits' then it would be mostly populated by sheer spectacle. Off the top of my head I can vividly recall sea watches where skuas, terns, wildfowl and waders streamed past on a conveyor belt of awe; clouds of thrushes tumbling out of pre-dawn skies, calling in the half light; vast finch flocks wheeling over farmland; coastal bushes heaving with warblers and chats; hirundines arrowing by in a controlled frenzy of migration.

Such events cannot be twitched. By and large you have to be present at the time to witness them. An hour later and the happening can have ceased - all that is left is empty skies and vacant bushes. Couple this with the primordial instinct behind the avian action and you have a very special event indeed.

550 Ring Ouzels or a Radde's Warbler? 90,000 House Martins or a Mamora's?

The numbers win every time.

Comments

Derek Faulkner said…
For me, the overwhelming thing about birding is simply the opportunity to be able to be out in the countryside and looking for birds, it's certainly and never has been, about rare birds, not that I've seen that many. I guess the rarest bird I've seen was the Oriental Collared Practincole, but that came to me on my patch, I certainly wouldn't of travelled to see it.
Like you say, such events can't be twitched, you simply have to be present at the time to witness them - not chasing after something somebody has found for you.
26 August 2015 at 21:03
Dave Boyle said…
Nothing wrong with Marmora's Warblers!
29 August 2015 at 07:47
Stewart said…
Spectacle every time Steve. I love big seawatches and big viz mig days and big falls in particular. These 'big' things beat the biggest of massive 'rares' to me. Give me 6,000 Little Auks ( yes on my patch it did happen), 300 skylarks, 1000 Redwings, 2000 Sooties everytime , I'm gettinga buzz just thinking about it! Bring it on!
30 August 2015 at 20:08
Steve Gale said…
We all agree then! Even Dave does really, he only mentioned the Marmora's because he found the Spurn one :-)
30 August 2015 at 21:29
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more