Confessions of a Twitcher Basher
By: Jonathan Dean
Tags: Birding, Birds, Twitching, Climate Change, Low Carbon Birding

Imagine the carnage if this “lad” were to show up at Minsmere.

Back in the halcyon days of the 1990s, there was a clearly defined hierarchy in British birding. And it was pretty clear what you had to do in order to ascend it: accumulate a big British list as quickly as possible, and become a familiar face who could be relied upon to show up at big twitches. As a naïve teenager, I had clear aspirations to do precisely that. But 25 years on, I feel immensely relieved that I never ended up becoming a fully-fledged twitcher. By which I mean: I never joined that subsection of the birding community who frequently travel long distances to see birds found by others, in a bid to maximise the length of their list.

In 2021, hardcore twitching still holds considerable sway within UK birding culture as a whole. Lots of general birding chit-chat, as well as print media and social media, is geared towards twitching and the infrastructure that supports it. What is more, a few of the dinosaurs of 80s and 90s twitching still enjoy a kind of super-niche minor celebrity status, egged on by online fans who insist on offering gushing praise for the simple feat of having the time, money and navigation skills necessary to travel to a pre-defined point at short notice. But like many others, I am impatient for change. The birding hierarchies of old have not been completely dismantled, but they are creaking under the pressure of those agitating for a healthier and more sustainable model of birding.

When I have said as much online, I have several times come up against the accusation that I am a “twitcher basher”. The term “twitcher basher” has been circulating in the popular birding lexicon for some time now. It tends to be used to accuse someone of harbouring a mean-spirited or irrational hostility towards twitchers. One curiosity is that those levelling the charge of “twitcher bashing” rarely offer an explicit defence of twitching itself. Instead, rejoinders to “twitcher bashing” typically take one of two forms. Either, they point out — correctly — that many twitchers also engage in more wholesome bird-related activity, such as local patching, bird surveying, or public engagement. Or, they appeal to a kind of cliché-ridden liberal individualism: “each to their own”, “live and let live”, “variety is the spice of life”, etc.

But what exactly, are these accusations of “twitcher bashing” a response to? Criticisms of twitching have been a constant throughout my time as a birder. When I started birding, my local branch of the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club (of which I was an active member) had a very firm self-perception as not a twitching group. Anyone recounting a rare bird sighting would often be subject to ironic jeers: “oooh, you’re a twitcher now are you?” I suspect this sentiment can be traced to a distinctively Presbyterian renunciation of pleasure and indulgence, familiar to anyone who grew up in Scotland prior to the turn of the millennium. But there are other frequent criticisms of twitching that don’t depend on a commitment to the teachings of Luther: twitchers are accused of accumulating ticks rather than pursuing a more rounded appreciation of birds and nature, and are vulnerable to the charge that their single-minded emphasis on “getting” the bird inevitably leads to various forms of anti-social behaviour. While these criticisms are often accurate, for me they are not decisive: if this was all the harm that twitching did, I suspect I would have more sympathy with those who suggest I should “live and let live”.

So what, exactly, is the problem? One is to do with the question of inclusivity and accessibility. The past year or two have seen some much needed discussion of how birding and nature conservation can become more inclusive and welcoming towards constituencies that traditionally have been under-represented. There is a growing body of evidence testifying to the marginalisation — and in some cases overt prejudice — that many women, people and colour, and LGBT+ people experience within birding and nature conservation circles. And it is likely that the image of birding as a largely older white male preserve puts people off taking up birding in the first place. The birding community’s skewedness towards older white dudes is even more pronounced when it comes to the world of hardcore twitching, beset with its unapologetically “blokey” atmosphere, which can come across as pretty toxic and unappealing to outsiders.

What is more, hardcore twitching is deeply exclusive. Despite many twitchers’ insistence that they are rugged, salt-of-the-earth proletarians, in reality they are drawn disproportionately from an age and income bracket who enjoy unusual levels of wealth in terms of both money and leisure time. Frequent twitching is simply not a viable option if — as is the norm for most people — you are confronted with stagnating wages, long working hours, caring responsibilities, or some combination thereof. Even relatively affluent workers, who may have enough disposable income to support a high-carbon twitching lifestyle, rarely have sufficient flexibility at work or at home to be able to drop everything at a moment’s notice. Thus, if we are serious about making birding more accessible and inclusive, it just isn’t viable to continue to afford so much attention and status to a niche subsection of the hobby only available to a tiny elite minority of people, and which has a culture that is deeply unappealing to most people anyway.

But perhaps the main reason for the new salience of so-called “twitcher bashing” is the recent polarisation in UK birding between, on the one hand, twitchers and their various acolytes and, on the other, low-carbon birders. Low-carbon birding has a simple premise: that, given the severity of the climate crisis, we in the birding community can and should develop more climate-friendly birding habits and behaviours. Frankly, I am stunned that anyone would deem this controversial. Low-carbon birding has been enthusiastically embraced by some. But others have greeted it with a mixture of indifference, half-baked excuses, and in some cases outright hostility. This unease and hostility is, I would suggest, testament to the continued hold of high-carbon big listing over our collective birding consciousness.

Two main arguments are offered in favour of maintaining the high-carbon status quo. One is the (correct) observation that the total carbon emissions from twitching are infinitesimally small compared to carbon emissions overall, so we should direct our criticism elsewhere. This misconstrues — perhaps wilfully — the point of low-carbon birding. People like me have embraced low-carbon birding not because we think the climate crisis can be solved by twitchers stopping twitching, but because the birding/nature conservation sector could — if it felt so inclined — lead by example and show that a less carbon-intensive approach is possible, whilst agitating for others to do likewise. It is not about forcing people to stop twitching, and I don’t claim that individual twitchers are “bad” (some are delightful, some are sociopathic egomaniacs, just like the general population). It’s simply about trying to shift the dial towards more sustainable styles of birding. A further blindspot in the “pick on someone else” argument is that it disregards the connections that birders like me have to the birding community as a whole. If, say, you were to discover that a close family member was engaging in tax avoidance, one would assume that you would, on principle, encourage them to do otherwise. It would not be just or reasonable for your relative to suggest that they should be left alone because Jeff Bezos does the same thing on a much bigger scale. The point is: I know that twitchers are not the worst carbon-emitters, but I am a part of the birding community (albeit a rather marginal and reluctant member!), I care about its values and its culture, and I think it can and should do better when it comes to tackling the climate crisis. Once again, I find it astonishing that anyone thinks this a controversial position.

The other argument in favour of high-carbon birding is to accuse low-carbon birders of being puritanical or sanctimonious. Frankly, I gladly accept this charge: yes, I am a bit sanctimonious at times and I’m sure many would find my shtick on twitter quite annoying (the fact that some of the more reactionary members of the 500+ club have blocked me would seem to confirm this!). Even if we accept that their irritation with me and fellow low-carbon birders is justified, peculiar indeed is the mindset that regards being slightly irritating on twitter as a greater sin than inaction on climate change. But I think we all know that these are not really intended to be sincere, good faith arguments against low-carbon birding. They are post-hoc rationalisations from birders unwilling to think seriously about their own stake in the climate crisis.

So where do we go from here? Much like Noel Gallgher, Friends and Blairism, hardcore twitching peaked in the 90s but stubbornly refuses to go away. Fortunately, however, its grip on the birding scene is weakening. We are currently witnessing a diversification of birding styles, and now manic twitching and a list of BOU 500+ is as likely to generate raised eyebrows as it is kudos and respect. The young birders’ green patch year list challenge is, I hope, an indication of where UK birding culture is heading. The bad news is the deflection, avoidance and whataboutery that characterises most birders’ reactions to low-carbon birding. As a team of leading environmental academics found, “discourses of delay” (i.e. acknowledging the existence of climate change, but deferring the moment of actually doing anything about it) constitute perhaps the single biggest obstacle to tackling the climate crisis. This is why “each to their own” doesn’t cut it. I am not prepared to “live and let live”. If something as moderate, sensible and uncontroversial as low-carbon birding is met with deflection, derision and disinterest from birders — i.e. people who I naively thought would be receptive to the call for climate action — then our prospects are bleak indeed. The new wave of mostly younger birders with greater climate literacy makes me hopeful, but I remain fearful that many in the birding community will just keep twitching while Rome burns.

“Any sign of the Sulphur-bellied Warbler?”

(image credit: George Romero, Dawn of the Dead, Laurel Group/United Film Distribution Company, 1978)