In this digital age, the procedure of collecting bird news needs spending more time on social networks throughout the working day than is healthy for any birder. On a good day it can be unbelievable to observe, as a wave of spring arrivals fans out throughout the nation and has birders tweeting across the country, or a single uncommon seabird is tracked from various seaside headlands through a number of county WhatsApp groups. It is often instructional, not least in the various groups committed to the recognition of birds (in addition to different other taxa). Periodically, almost comparable to the arrival of the seasons, reoccurring styles increase to the surface area and conversations in these groups frequently follow some well-trodden courses.
One of Birdwatch‘s other renowned writers just recently described a specific subset of birders as ‘Steve’ and this group of my peers is one that I acknowledge all too well. Along with ‘Dave’, they are almost undoubtedly individuals who will react to a recognition inquiry on a bird they think about simple to recognize by encouraging the individual requesting the ID to think about acquiring a guidebook, such as the Collins Bird Guide.
I attempt to guide far from conspiracy theories, however I’ve increasingly begun to wonder if the ‘Dave’ and ‘Steve’ accounts are actually publisher-funded bot accounts created to increase the sales of certain field guide titles or boost the user base of some of the recently developed ID apps, so frequent is this shared advice given out.
Pointing a new or inexperienced birder querying an ID in the direction of a publication such as the Collins Bird Guide may be tempting, but it isn’t always the best thing to do.
The ‘everyone needs a field guide and to make efforts to identify the bird themselves’ trope needs to be called out in several ways, though. Not least because we are all different; we learn differently, we think differently and we remember differently. While the intentions of those repeating the ‘buy a field guide’ mantra may be to help, assuming everyone has the same bunch of motivations when it comes to engaging with birds is where it falls down quite quickly.
For a minority, birds can be work; increasingly for some, birding is a competitive sport where only the tick or the best image matters. For most, it is a hobby. But for some, birds represent the fleeting moments when they are distracted from the harsh realities of life by a tiny bundle of flying feathers. That word hobby is worth reflecting on: ‘a regular activity done for enjoyment during leisure time’. We don’t have to be expert or even good at the things we enjoy – sometimes just the act of doing them is enough.
Whether the identification question is a short-lived curiosity to put a name to a garden visitor, or the resolution of a family debate about an unusual bird sat high in a tree on their weekend country walk, let’s all accept that often beyond the name there is no desire in many to serve a long ‘apprenticeship’ in bird identification, nor to become the next revered ID guru. Most people will never keep a list of birds they have actually seen (this might come as a shock to some!). Many who ask for an recognition, whether from a grainy image captured on their phone or a 10-word description written on the back of their last KFC bag, won’t ever pick up a pair of binoculars and are perhaps more likely to associate Swarovski with crystal necklaces than cutting-edge optics.
So, let’s cut non-birders and birders alike some slack, and stop the gatekeeping that tells individuals they require to have actually invested months looking into the main emarginations of Acrocephalus warblers when all they truly desire is a little assist with putting a name to a short-term brush with nature that brought a little remedy for life’s day-to-day grind.
