Twitching

To twitch is to purposefully make a special out-of-the-way trip to see an out-of-its-normal-range bird that some other birder has discovered (Talk like a birder! Amaze your friends! Key birder terms are shown in italics). For example, say a Dusky Thrush, an Asian robin-like bird that should be wintering in Japan, is found gobbling mountain ash berries in a suburban yard in Langley. On hearing the news, if your reaction is to grab your car keys and your credit card and kiss goodbye your son or daughter whose birthday party you were supposed to be recording, and tell the  birthday child that you'll get the next birthday since they do came around once a year, whereas this could be your only Dusky Thrush ever, you're a twitcher. Filial obligations and domestic happiness evaporate as fast as the exhaust vapours from your vehicle as you begin your twitch.

When a female-type Great-tailed Grackle appeared at Okanagan Landing in early December, 1993 almost every lister in B.C. twitched it. The bird stuck around until at least March, 1994. Photo by C. Siddle of a similar bird at Laguna, Atascosa, Texas, March 2011. 

A recent example of the cause for a twitch: West Kootenay birders Gary Davidson, Paul Prappus and Carolee Colter simultaneously and unexpectedly saw a White-eyed Vireo in Kootenay Creek Provincial Park a few kilometres west of Nelson, B.C., a species that has never been seen in British Columbia before, an unexpected vagrant from the Atlantic seaboard, among other possible places of origin, on 1 Dec 2014. The news of their amazing find spread like wildfire and people far off (Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria) asked, "Is the White-eyed Vireo a one day wonder or will it stick around near the site of its discovery to be twitchable?"

"How long a drive is it from my home to Nelson?"

"What's the weather forecast for tomorrow?"

"What excuse shall I use to get off work tomorrow? Who can I say died suddenly without the lie being discovered?"

"This job sucks anyway. I'll just go for the bird and deal with the consequences when I return to work. Nurse, take over please. The rest of this heart transplant is pretty much by the book. What do you mean, you're not capable? You'll never know until you try. I'm out of here. "

Okay, perhaps that last sentiment is a tad exaggerated since I don't know anyone who actually chucked his/her job to go on a twitch, but I do know several people who might as well have, since they were useless at work once they had been burdened with the knowledge that a rare bird was possibly waiting for them just a few hundred kilometres away, and there they werein an unhappy birdless place, having to appear to be productive while images of a rarity fluttered through their heads.

The origins of the twitch are lost in the carbon dioxide build up of time but since twitching is a non-lethal form of hunting, the twitch may have begun with two of our ancient ancestors, Thang and Mung, two young Cro-Magnans who competed in every way possible at the prehistoric time.

Mung: (chest thump) Mung see a big bird you've never seed! (pronouns and past participles hadn't been invented yet)

Thang: That's pure bison poop. Thang seed every bird in the valley!

Mung: It's not in this valley. Mung seed it in the next valley over that way (cardinal directions had not yet been invented). It's big and white with eyes the colour of the sun. Also its eyes are like ours.

Thang: Bloodshot?

Mung: No. Looking forward. In front of face. Not on side of head like bison or your sister. (invents I'm watching you gesture. Funny how long-lived some fads are!)

Thang: (mini-chest thump) Mung show Thang this white bird?

Mung: No, Mung have big date (an actual edible date, growing large in prehistoric times)

Thang: (heavy furrowing of heavy brows) Where Thang find white bird with yellow eyes then?

And Mung gave him directions by pointing vaguely off into the distance and mentioning camps and caves of people Thang had never heard of. Somethings never change. Thang, being male, pretended to understand.

Thus the first twitch may have been Thang's quest for a Snowy Owl, a species that has since inspired thousands of twitches. The point is Thang had to drop everything and go out of his way to find this bird; he had to explore a valley previously unknown to him and it took him the whole weekend to reach the valley, find the bird and walk home to his cave. That's a pretty typical time frame for a mid-sized twitch. A really long twitch might involve one or more airlines, like flying from Kelowna, B.C. to Brownsville, Texas, for a White-throated Robin, normally found in Mexico. Such LD twitches are for rich birders or temporarily crazed ones, like guys doing Big Years, a devastating mental illness that hurts everyone it touches. A short twitch might involve a drive from Vernon to Kelowna for a Pacific Golden-Plover at Robert Lake. But what if someone reports a rare bird in your town and you go and see it. Is that a twitch? Not really. There needs to be some appreciable factor of distance involved.

A White-throated Thrush near McAllen, Texas, a bird that Gary Davidson helped me twitch in March, 2011. 

Time is always of the essence in a twitch. The most extreme twitchers drop everything to begin a twitch. When the call that a rare bird has been located somewhere, some twitchers are considerate of social obligations like appearing at their own wedding, or attending the funeral of a close friend or relative, but all twitchers, some secretly, some obviously, chafe beneath just restrictions.

The twitcher knows that the faster he/she responds, the better his/her chances are of seeing the bird. Although some rare birds surprise everyone by sticking around, most don't. Many are the birds that stayed one day and part of the next early morning, only to depart as the balance of twitchers arrived. "You should have been here five minutes ago!"  are among the saddest words ever spoken to a twitcher who just dipped, which is the lingo for missing the bird. In this category I would place my only Ross's Gull which appeared at a small lake in Washington State's Okanagan Valley a few years ago. If I recall correctly, birders had about two and a half days to see this exotic Arctic gull feeding on a disgusting jellified deer carcass on an obscure beach off a secondary road.

Some out-of-range birds delight everyone by staying in a known location for months. Some waterfowl are especially good at extended stays especially if the stray turns up somewhere in late autumn and overwinters. Such a target species allows the birder to make a long, leisurely twitch, which has a nice oxymoronic sound to it. That's how I added a Falcated Duck (near Eugene, Oregon), a Steller's Eider (Port Townsend, Washington) and lately a Tundra Bean Goose (near Tillamook, Oregon) to my life list.

Have I dipped? Oh, yes, spectacularly. For example, way back in 1987 a White-headed Woodpecker was coming to a feeder on Anarchist Mountain. Everyone who tried for it got it. We were living in Fort St. John at the time. At the beginning of spring break I twitched 1200 kms one way and parked in the wrong driveway for 2 days. Of course, I didn't learn that it was the wrong driveway until many weeks later, which made my little heartbreak over the dip just that much more bitter. The only good thing about that particular twitch which ended up occupying most of spring break was that on the way home I stopped at Haynes Point Provincial Park, Osoyoos, and blundered into the Okanagan's first Swamp Sparrow. Oh, and by the way, my string of bad luck with the White-headed Woodpecker in B.C. continues to this day. I've seen White-heads in Washington, Oregon and California but every time one pops up in B.C. I am there to miss it, even the two birds that appeared semi-regularly for almost two weeks along Camp McKinney Road near Oliver.  But every birder has a nemesis bird.

This post is dedicated to Gary Davidson, my good friend from Nakusp, B.C., who has been on many a twitch with me. He has also been responsible for finding a large number of twitchable birds himself including the White-eyed Vireo (with Paul and Carolee), Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Cape May Warbler, Lesser Black-backed Gull, and others.