Twitching by numbers: Twenty-four years of chasing rare birds around Britain and Ireland

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The cover? Gives a good idea of what the book contains. The book is illustrated by the author and, although infinitely better than I could do myself, the illustrations are all quite good, but not tip top. The Ovenbird gives a fair idea of the quality of illustrations. I’d give it 6/10. The most unfortunate twitchers race many kilometres to spot a bird only to find that their flighty subjects have flown off – a bummer known in the twitching world as a "dip". One of the most infamous dips came as Webb pursued a long-tailed shrike in the Outer Hebrides off mainland Scotland. The boat he and 12 others had hired died in choppy waters, forcing a daring rescue by Her Majesty's Coastguard. "We were worried for our lives for a bit, but we were more worried about not seeing this bird," he said.

Book review: Twitching by Numbers by Garry Bagnell - Mark Avery

Garry’s book goes into that, in depth. The level of commitment to see a bird in the shetlands, Scilly’s and everywhere in between shows no limits. I loved the ‘See you in a couple of days, darling’ attitude when the Mega alert landed and he was off on another adventure. An adventure that could quite easily end up being empty handed and missing a bird by minutes. That after the gruelling drive and ferry to somewhere like the Shetland Isles!!Garry Bagnell looks for a shorelark at Great Yarmouth. Unsuccessful sightings are known as 'dips'. Photograph: Andrew Testa/The Washington Post The book takes you through the various twitching adventures in the British Isles and aspects of my private life. Twitching by Numbers’ by Garry Bagnell, a memoir of his anecdotes about birdwatching, published in this very year 2022. Insert joke about tits here, but seriously this is why women still feel so unwelcome in the birding community. I’m still bemused that the author felt compelled to water down/ delete certain sections just because a single magazine columnist condemned the book having identified what she deemed to be ‘sexism’.

Washington Post In Britain, bird-watching gone wild - The Washington Post

Though most twitchers are bird-lovers, the sport is mostly about the chase. Bagnell, for instance, drove 90 minutes and searched the ground for a half-hour before he spotted the coy shorelark in beach scrub. He eyed it for a few moments before tweeting his find, then moved on. "I've got another bird to get three hours away," he said.Twitching by Numbers: twenty-four years of chasing uncommon birds round Britain and Eire by Garry Bagnell is self printed. I had by no means heard of a foam get together till I learn this e-book – perhaps I ought to get out extra, or perhaps not. The One-Star rating is the least possible to be able to submit a review - please count this as a Negative 1-star.

Twitching by numbers: Twenty-four years of chasing rare birds

If you’ve done something really, really bad and you wish to atone for your sins there are several things you can do: you could wear a hair shirt for a month, you could walk naked through Canterbury on a market day whilst self-flagellating and proclaiming your sins or you could read this book. In retrospect I think I would have preferred to have suffered the walk of shame, at least that would have been a more interesting way to spend my time. As a relatively new birder, I first stumbled across Garry and other associated characters in the BBC documentary about twitching. I was hooked on the dedication, commitment and - dare I say - slight competitiveness amongst them! The story starts in 1999 just after my 32nd Birthday and I've just ended my 18-year love affair with watching private jets around the world.

In 2009, Bagnell said, he and other twitchers were aghast when two elderly rivals on the circuit went for each other's throats. "One was saying he'd seen a bird, and the other said he didn't believe him," Bagnell said. During the story I get selected for a BBC documentary called "Twitchers: A very British Obsession" and formed a successful WhatsApp group called “Casual Twitchers”. The desk close to the again of this e-book which lists the High 10 listers in Britain and Eire in 1987 and now (two names seem in each lists) is fascinating. You’d have been on the prime of the record in 1987, apart Ron Johns, in the event you had seen a paltry (I jest!) 463 species whereas now Steve Gantlett’s estimated 590 species leads all of them. Twitching is a lifetime marathon and because the writer factors out you’ll must spend 4 a long time at it, and pretty obsessively at it, to face any probability of a prime 10 rating. All of the names within the two lists are males – who may have guessed?