Congratulations on your successful twitching. We saw pelicans, osprey, and anhingans, and a large iguana up a tree., Mary Helen saw a red fox on Sanibel.

Yesterday's post referred to 'listers' and 'twitchers' as branches of the BIRDING COMMUNITY. You probably already know that a lister is a birder who keeps track of birds spotted through the use of checklists ranging from simplistic to Byzantine. In order to answer the unspoken, but obvious questions, our birding word of the day is 'twitch' as in, "My first successful twitch was the Willow Ptarmigan." To twitch is to deliberately pursue rare birds to add to your life list. Twitch is a verb, but it may also be used as a noun. One who twitches is, of course, a twitcher. You may be one yourself. There is nothing wrong with twitching. I do it all the time. But twitching is very far to one end of the birding continuum. Twitchers will travel across the world just to see one special bird. They will brave the most adverse conditions and penetrate the most forbidding terrain. Twitching may be fun, but it is also very serious. Since 'twitch' is, to my knowledge, a U.K. term, I would like to quote Rich Bonser of British Isles Birding: "The pursuit of seeing rare species of bird, known as 'twitching', has developed into a culture in which individuals travel the length and breadth of the country in order to increase the number of species that they have seen. 'Twitching' involves a fanatical group of individuals who are obsessed about birds yet despite being rooted in this obsession with natural history, their traveling is a form of 'collecting' – in a similar vein to philanthropists and train-spotters. The notion of 'twitching' contests the boundary between nature and culture and allows one to become increasingly aware of a community that is shaped by nature." And yes, the term twitch does have something to do with the spastic exultations a successful bird sighting has been known to induce.

I am a bird-watcher. Wouldn’t you think that was an innocent, enjoyable pastime, beyond the reach of the politically correct social reformers? It is not. They have stuck their unwelcome noses into my inoffensive hobby and I don’t like it. They tell me I mustn’t feed wild birds, I mustn’t attract birds by playing tape recordings of their songs, I must call birds by their officially endorsed names. They say it is reprehensible to be a twitcher. Their influence is such that many perfectly respectable twitchers disown the description. Well, I don’t see anything wrong with feeding birds (as long as you give them the right food and don’t let them become dependent on it). Attracting birds with tape recordings is okay by me in moderation. I reckon you can call birds whatever you like, it’s your business, and I am a twitcher. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a ‘twitcher’ as ‘a bird-watcher whose main aim is to collect sightings of rare birds.’ What’s wrong with that? I am proud to call myself a twitcher. Others are not. Once, on a bird excursion, when I stated openly that I was a twitcher, a woman actually flicked me with her jumper to express her absolute disgust. Can you believe it? Most people don’t stoop to physical violence, they choose not to believe me. They usually say something like, ‘Sue Taylor calls herself a twitcher, but she isn’t really. Sue appreciates a bird’s beauty and enjoys observing its behaviour.’ The implication is that people who appreciate a bird’s beauty cannot be twitchers. Let me tell you that they can!