A very pretty new species of bird was found in India, which is amazing as there has been avid ornothological study for over a century in that country and it has never been discovered before.
Good thing the first one is in India. Anywhere in Northern Europe and it would have been surrounded by hundreds of twitchers and scared to death. *************************************************** 09-18-06, 06:30 PM DorianGreyed So that's where Tweety went. Boy, I leave the cage door open for one minute to answer the phone, and there she goes.
09-18-06, 07:00 PM frankvan
quote: Originally posted by FredPuli: Good thing the first one is in India. Anywhere in Northern Europe and it would have been surrounded by hundreds of twitchers and scared to death. Roll Eyes
Twitchers ????
09-19-06, 01:49 AM mozart56 Twitching :
Once one has got into building up a life list, you then become a twitcher. A twitcher is someone who actively seeks out new birds to put on their lifelist and the word is supposed to describe the uncontrollable spasms of excitement when seeing a new bird for the first time. Most birders are twitchers to some extent, but the degree to which the ticking of new species is important is a personal thing. Some birders can be described as "hart-core" twitchers, and are interested in nothing other than ticking new species. Twitching has led to a whole vocabulary to describe what happens when you go twitching. "Gripping" a bird means that you "got it" - you can add it to you life list. Conversely when you go looking for birds and miss out on something you should have seen then you "dipped out" on that species. ( I didn't know what it meant either)
09-19-06, 02:49 AM FredPuli Frank, in the UK the twitchers have a network by internet and phone so that they can fly instantly to anywhere where a 'new' bird is found. So we get hordes of them arriving 'out of the blue' anywhere from some poor individual's back garden to industrial estates to remote Scottish islands, just to get another hit. The bird is always an 'accidental', here because it has been blown off course by freak weather. It would be easier for the twitchers to fly to the area of Europe,Africa or North America where the bird is native but that would miss the point for these obsessives Roll Eyes In one instance the bird was caught and eaten by a neighbour's cat before many of the twitchers had got to it. Goodness, were they annoyed !
This seems to be primarily an English, or British, obsession, like trainspotting. American birders seem to fill their lists by more conventional birding, finding the rarest birds in the wild in the birds' native habitat.
(What's the betting you don't have trainspotters, or their cousins the planespotters, in the USA ?)
09-19-06, 05:35 AM Sherasi Never heard of Twitchers, trainspotting.. what, you look for trains? Don't you all have regular rail schedules??? Eek I don't watch for planes either... its not like they are rare! Confused
09-19-06, 12:19 PM FredPuli
quote: Originally posted by Sherasi: Never heard of Twitchers, trainspotting.. what, you look for trains? Don't you all have regular rail schedules??? Eek I don't watch for planes either... its not like they are rare! Confused
Ah, Sher, the mysteries of English life Big Grin Every engine (locomotive) has a number and sometimes a name, too. They belong in different 'classes', that is types and models. So a trainspotter stands at the station or by the line (track) and carefully notes the type and number of each as it passes or is seen stopped in the sidings or marshalling yard. He (and it's usually a he ) has reference books and can bore anyone outside trainspotters rigid with details of each one, which line it was on, where it was going, whether it is a rare or common one, whether it has been modified etc etc.They all meet and compare notes and communicate far and wide with others of their community.
A planespotter is the air equivalent. Nobody outside Britain understands them and we had one case a few years ago when a group of English planespotters in Greece were arrested for espionage and breach of state security because they were recording military aircraft numbers and types. They were all jailed and it took the combined efforts of puzzled Greek defence lawyers and the intervention of the Embassy and experts on British culture and habits to get them out again on appeal. Big Grin
09-19-06, 01:27 PM Sherasi Oy. Confused
09-19-06, 01:34 PM FredPuli
quote: Originally posted by Sherasi: Oy. Confused
Indeed. In Britain we call people like this, nerdy types who seem obsessed with collecting detail of anything, not just train numbers,, 'anoraks' because an anorak is the garment they all wear. Just the thing for spending hours by a railway line in all weathers !
09-19-06, 02:37 PM Sherasi I can understand being obsessive and focussed on things that interest you, but I never figured that some people would choose something that seems so absolutely trivial.
11-14-06, 05:36 PM FredPuli 'Twitchers' again ! On November 12th a seabird was photographed at Dawlish, Devon, in the south west of England. By the 13th the photo had been posted on a birdwatchers' site.Somebody identified the bird as long-billed murrelet, a kind of auk, a great rarity but readily mistaken for a commoner bird of the same family . No example of this bird has been seen alive in Britain and only one, found dead in Zurich, in Western Europe. It belongs 4000 miles away, being native to the Kamchatka Peninsular .
Once it was shown on the website an estimated 2000 twitchers arrived from all over Britain, within 24 hours, to see it ! Roll Eyes Mad,or what? At least the bird has survived the attention.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,
