Off the record: why twitching is as sad as they say

Not spotted: The Hermit Thrush

I was reading through a copy of Birdwatch earlier this week and I was shocked. Not by news of a rare bird but by a double page spread half way through the issue under the headline 'Off the record'.

The piece was written by Nigel Pepper, a birdwatcher from Essex, who in 1994 'found' a rare Hermit Thrush near his home. The find was submitted to, and accepted by, the Rarities Committee (which itself, appropriately for this story, sounds a lot like something that would not have been out of place in 1984).

The article is a confession; a confession 15 years later by Pepper that he had in fact made up the find. But why? What he recalls I find fascinating.

As he explains in the piece, he starting birdwatching in the 1980s as a "relaxing way to spend time". What started out as a harmless hobby gradually became more serious. Pepper received annual reports from the Essex Birdwatching Society and became increasingly frustrated about the birds that, despite being in his own county, he had missed. In his words: "The same finders' names cropped up time after time, belonging to an elite self-appointed circle of observers who had decided to keep this information private, while hypocritically using reports provided by other birders to attend twitches."

He goes on to say that Essex has been responsible for some of "the most outrageous episodes of suppression in the annals of British birding". He found himself ashamed of the county. He became increasingly angry and decided to "make a point". So he waited for the right time of year and conditions and 'found' a Hermit Thrush.

The episode has haunted him ever since, he says, as he has faced never-ending questions about his 'find' - and friendships with other birders have become strained. The article was Pepper's moment to 'fess up.

My feelings after reading this article were dismay and then something slightly short of anger. Birdwatching is one of those pastimes that many people regard as 'geeky', on the same level as train spotting or, say, metal detecting. I have always joked about it myself but at the same am always keen to set the record straight and point out that the fascination with birdwatching is in appreciating the world around us that we fail to notice enough in our every day life (I don't feel the same way about trains. Or metal.)

Programmes like Springwatch do much to promote this idea and have gone a long way in bringing wildlife watching to the masses (even if Chris Packham is a bit of a geek...).

So this idea of birders - or twitchers in this case (there is a distinct difference) - going around like bunches of immature teenagers 'suppressing' information about where they have watched a rare bird is frankly at best, sad, and at worst destructive of the ethos of bird watching. Seeing something amazing or unusal in the natural world should be shared with other people, not hidden. I strongly suspect that the idiots who do this look not unlike the stereotype of a trainspotter. I also suspect they are sad, lonely individuals who find themselves suddenly 'powerful' when part of, what is probably mainly, a 'boy's club' of other sad individuals.

I don't condone what Potter did. To be honest I couldn't really care less, except to say that it sounds like he has acted in just as sad a way as the people he is trying to 'make a point' to. And how it backfired. But what does bother me is that it puts people like me off from pursuing an interest I have always enjoyed.

I shall be avoiding the men, and women, in anoraks like the plague.