Birds? They were all the same to me. I couldn’t tell a lapwing from a peewit, or a green plover from a pyewipe. (For good reason: they are all the same.) So: there are bird spotters (aka ‘birders’ or perhaps ‘twitchers’) and there are bird watchers. They’re different, just like Strava nerds are different from cafe/cake trundlers. Birders keep lists, tables and stats, and travel miles to bag a new species. They wear woolly hats and carry binoculars and flasks. Whereas watchers like, well, watching birds. It’s not about trophy lists; it’s the nature-vibe, the tranquillity and birdsong, the ambience. They wear woolly hats and carry binoculars and flasks.
Well, now I’m a watcher, with binoculars in my panniers, just like I’m a cafe/cake trundler. My birds epiphany came at a gravel pit in East Yorkshire. I cycle regularly from York to Hull; en route there’s North Cave’s nature reserve, with a bird hide. It’s become my regular stop-off: toilet, shelter, picnic tables, burger van – and birds, doing birdy things on the ponds and
