Sean Dooley - Big Twitch: One Man, One Continent, a Race Against Time-A True Story about Birdwatching

THE BIG
TWITCH

THE BIG
TWITCH

SEAN DOOLEY

ONE MAN,
ONE CONTINENT,
A RACE AGAINST TIME
A TRUE STORY ABOUT
BIRDWATCHING

First published in Australia 2005

Copyright text Sean Dooley 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given remuneration to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
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Crows Nest NSW 2065
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Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-publication entry:

Dooley, Sean, 1968
The big twitch : one man, one continent a race against
time a true story about birdwatching.

ISBN 1 74114 528 7.

1. Dooley, Sean, 1968- . 2. Bird watchers - Australia.
3. Bird watching - Australia. I. Title.

598.072340994

Cover design: Cheryl Collins Design
Text design: Phil Campbell
Typesetting: Prowling Tiger Press
Author photo (front cover): Greg Elms
Bird photos (front cover): in hand, Rohan Clarke; top, Chris Tzaros
Author photo (back cover): Mike Carter
Printed in Australia by Griffin Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Diane and Barry Dooley
For their love, for their example and for giving me the
opportunity to piss an inheritance up against a wall.

Contents

White-bellied Cuckoo-shrike. Red-necked Phalarope. Forty-spotted Pardalote. There, now that the non-birdwatchers have lost interest and have skipped to the first page containing a description of an outback sunset, I can have a little chat. This is the story of my quest to break the Australian birdwatching record and as such is concerned primarily with birds. In order to keep the dude non-birdwatching readers interested, however, occasionally I have had to divert from a purely birding focus. I would love nothing more than to write a book solely dedicated to each and every bird I saw during my big year, but I fear that I would lose the non-birding audience if I attempted to outline such things as the morphological differences between the New Zealand and Australian races of Shy Albatross. Please bear with me at these times as I try and placate those weird non-birdo readers.

To my many wonderful birding friends throughout the Australian ornithological community an advance apology. You must remember that for most people, birdwatching seems a particularly unfathomable pastime. For their benefit I have at times exaggerated our behaviour for comic effect. If you feel you recognise yourself in these pages please remember that no malice is intended and it is all meant in good humour. I hope that I can still look forward to your friendly greetings in the swamps, scrubs and sewage farms around the country for many years to come.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and if you do know a non-birder, lets just keep this bit between ourselves shall we?

Feelings. Relationships. Social interaction. Now that the birdwatch-ers have lost interest and have skipped to the first page containing a description of an immature Zitting Cisticola I can have a little chat. This is the story of my quest to break the Australian birdwatching record and is concerned primarily with birds, which keeps the nerdy birdwatching readers interested. Happily for everyone else there are plenty of non-birding diversions. I would love to have written more extensively about the landscape I travelled through, the characters I met and the emotions I felt during my big year but I fear that I would lose the birdy-nerdy audience if I didnt occasionally lapse into outlining something technical like the morphological differences between the Australian and New Zealand races of Shy Albatross. Please bear with me at these times as I try and placate those weird birdo readers.

I have many wonderful birding friends throughout the Australian ornithological community, but I feel I must apologise for them in advance because we are a particularly unfathomable lot. You may think I have exaggerated the behaviour of these birdy nerdies for comic effect, but in all honesty I dare only scratch the surface of this bizarre world lest they recognise themselves in these pages and fail to see the humour. Remember; I have to contend with these freaks out on the swamps, scrubs and sewage farms around the country for years to come.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and if you do know a birder, lets just keep this bit between ourselves shall we?

A guide to a few of the more specialist terms in the book

Glossowary: Glossary combined with cassowary, Australias second largest bird. The last stupid bird pun of the book. I promise. Well, almost the last one.

Twitch: The act of chasing after a rare bird. Can be both a verb: I tried to twitch the Grey Falcon, and a noun: I dipped when I was on the Grey Falcon Twitch.

Grey Falcon: A mythical bird that doesnt exist.

Dip/dip out: The most depressing term in birdwatching. To miss out on seeing a bird.

Birder/birdwatcher/birdo: Someone who watches birds. All are fairly interchangeable and fluid terms. I tend to describe myself as a birder as I think it is the least daggy of the three. Kind of like saying you choose cyanide as your favourite poison because it is the least deadly.

Twitcher: An extremely dangerous creature with a nasty reputation. Essentially a birder who indulges in the act of twitching. Doesnt have quite the same negative connotation in Australia as it does in places like Britain. In fact most birders here would admit to occasionally indulging in a little of bit of twitching behaviour and if they dont they are most probably dirty rotten liars or total dudes.

Dude: A non-birdwatcher. Often used as a term of derision especially when applied to someone who is actually a birder.

Tick: What a twitcher does to a bird: reduce its beauty, majesty and wonder to a mere tick in a checklist.

Stringer: The greatest villain of the birding world. Someone who makes claims of non-existent birds (the act of stringing). Not to be confused with simply making a mistake of identification. Rarely done deliberately (one hopes), stringing usually occurs when a birder doesnt see a bird well enough, jumps to the wrong conclusion and is either too proud or stubborn to back down. To be labelled a stringer is to lose all credibility.

Lifer: A bird a twitcher has never seen in their life before. Also what many birders would like to turn a stringer into for their crimes.

Grip off: Not as grubby as it sounds but still an unpleasant experience. When one birder teases another after having seen a bird the other one hasnt.

Pelagic: a) Oceanic. b) a type of oceanic seabird. Note: Pelagic seabird is not a tautology as some species of seabird are usually found in coastal waters such as Pacific Gull and Black-faced Cormorant while others such as albatross are almost exclusively oceanic. c) Boat trips organised to go out to look for pelagic seabirds.

Seabirders: Birders who pay money to go out to sea in tiny boats in the middle of the ocean in order to get a closer look at pelagic species such as albatross. Idiots in other words.