Who's a Twitcher?

A Kirtland's warbler is a rare sighting in Washtenaw County where we live. They breed only in a very small territory in northern Michigan, and there are so few of them that they are rarely spotted during migration. When one shows up (like this), local birders flock to the spot to get a look at it. Those keeping a list of birds they have seen in the county are especially excited by the opportunity! Len took this photo earlier this week when the bird was flying through on its way to the nesting grounds.



This female (or maybe immature male) summer tanager was regularly visiting a bird feeder near us this week. The adult male of the species is the only completely red bird in North America, but he wasn't here, I guess. Their normal range ends quite far from here, so it's an unusual visitor.

A nesting yellow-throated warbler, seldom seen here.

I love Len's photo of the northern parula, a type of warbler, that had just caught a dragon fly. This bird is not particularly rare in our area during spring migration.  Len has been going out to see what photos he can get -- for example the above photos from his Flickr page. He's not at all alone, as many people in our area, Washtenaw County, Michigan, are doing so too. Whether they watch birds just for the sake of enjoying their beauty, or whether they are keeping one or another type of list, they seem very dedicated to the pursuit of both common and rare sightings.

During the pandemic lock-down this month, solo birding is in fact one of the few permitted and safe activities. Organized bird walks have been cancelled, along with just about every organized activity, but individuals continue to go out to the places where bird migration brings many species that are seen here only at this time of year. Most birders seem to be very respectful of the social distancing and mask-wearing requirements that we all face at the moment.

Quite a few local birders share sighting information on a variety of internet lists and on eBird: "the world’s largest biodiversity-related citizen science project, with more than 100 million bird sightings contributed each year by eBirders around the world. A collaborative enterprise with hundreds of partner organizations, thousands of regional experts, and hundreds of thousands of users, eBird is managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology." (source)

Informally, Len sometimes refers to his quest for unusual sightings as "twitching," but the word twitching is usually reserved for a somewhat unsavory form of birding, by people who seem to care only about making the longest possible list of the birds they have seen, and to have little interest in politeness, environment, or other things that characterize more conventional birders. To quote a very disapproving description:

"A twitcher is a type of birder who seeks to add as many species as possible to their life list, often without detailed or long-term observation of individual birds. Instead, twitchers are often characterized as being satisfied only with achieving a confirmed identification as quickly as possible. These types of birders are regularly associated with poor birding ethics, though that generalization does not apply universally to every twitcher and only serves to promote controversy and discord about this type of birding." (source)

Clearly, no one would self-identify with this definition, though lots of birders call it twitching when they follow one of the leads to an exceptional bird sighting. The word "twitching" for this behavior dates to 1950s, and was first used to describe one Howard Medhurst, a British birdwatcher.



In November 2018, a bird showed up in Washtenaw County that appealed to REAL twitchers! The spotted redshank is usually found only in northern Europe. However, the one shown in Len's photo had become lost and spent a few days at a pond near us. Len talked to people at the site who flew into Detroit Metro Airport, rented a car, drove the 45 minutes or so to the location, looked at the bird, and turned around and went home with one more tick on their bird lists. Needless to say, except for that one time, the bird has never been seen here before or since.

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