Green(ish) with envy

I don't have a photo of a Greenish Warbler to head this blog, though it's not for a lack of effort.  It's always good to break a run of dipping birds, and last time out I broke my recent poor record by seeing at least one Greenish Warbler in two different locations.  Arriving at Thornwick early in the morning I was directed by a friendly local to where the strip of hedges and pine trees runs behind the Adventure Barn at the camp site.  The Greenish showed fairly well almost immediately, allowing me to observe it for a good half a minute and pick up the differences between it and other phylloscs.  This caught me off guard with camera still in the bag, and I didn't want to stop watching to get my gear together.  It lulled me into a sense of false security that the bird was going to perch well so I could photograph it at leisure. Once it dived into cover, I got my camera ready and waited patiently for it to reappear.  

Of course, for the next hour it was completely hidden away.  It's such a dense habitat that once a bird has hunkered down low in the core of the undergrowth it's almost impossible to relocate.  A hundred distractions whirled around me, with two or three Pied Flycatchers, hirundines in their hundreds and Swifts competing for attention with Yellowhammer, Pipits, Linnet and an enormous flock of juvenile Goldfinches.  A strident alarm calling Whimbrel circled Thornwick Bay, and I lost track of the Greenish altogether.  Spending a good 25 minutes photographing what I hoped was the Greenish Warbler but which turned out to be a Willow Warbler (as thankfully pointed out by one of the two other birders who appeared from behind the thicket as I was muttering to myself about the light) but which steadfastly refused to sit in light or show it's actual face was frustrating, and by 9.30am I had just about given up on getting a photo.  A birder arrived just after the warbler vanished for what seems to have been the final time at Thornwick for this bird, and his anguish tugged on that same nerve I wrote about in my last blog - a dip in a series of dips.  Still, I'd seen the bird albeit briefly and had an unsatisfying view, and I left him with his envy.

I decided to walk South Landing, an area which has produced some excellent rarities that I have been lucky enough to see (thanks to all the various finders!).  Seeing Taiga Flycatcher and Red-flanked Bluetail only 120m apart there in November 2021, along with a second RFBT last year, has left a residue of birding magic in the area in my mind, and I almost always find it a soothing place to walk.  I've begun to really struggle physically with the plantar fasciitis, and I had to bring a stick with me to cope with putting weight on my right leg.  So it was a slow walk, and I was pretty much at the apex of the stroll when news of a second (or more likely the relocating Greenish) at the golf course willows reached me.  I decided I really wanted a photograph of the bird - something I've enjoyed this year is picking up photos of the birds I've seen, even though I'm no photographer and deep down I'd rather be watching the bird than taking snaps.  I find that trying to get a picture sometimes has the effect of helping me to focus on the plumage and behaviour of the bird more than simply getting eyes on it - anticipating the motion of the bird for a camera is different than the same skill with binoculars.

Limping as fast as I could to the car, I made it to the location for the Greenish Warbler about 35 minutes after the report hit BirdGuides.  Of course, it wasn't showing well, or even barely at all.  I got a 3 second glimpse of it only to hear the words you've come to expect: "you should have been here 15 minutes ago, it was calling and showing so well..."  I was, obviously, green with envy.  Cue flashback to the gentleman I saw earlier.  I gave it 90 minutes, but never got my eyes back on the Greenish Warbler, and taking that as my time to gracefully bow out, I wandered slowly around the headland, watching Gannet and Fulmar master the skies. 

Solo driving can be difficult when birding regularly, and I sometimes find the echo of my thoughts is a bit much.  To corral my own mind on the drive home, I tend to try and think about what I'm going to write in my blog, to have a strap line or a pun, or a point I want to make.  This was difficult today because I almost never blog without a photo of the bird I'm focusing on simply because it adds a point of visual interest and generates clicks.  But as I've been exploring different aspects of birding in the last few write-ups I wanted to post today even though I failed to get a picture.  

The other reason is that following my chasing a Willow Warbler around a tree to get a photo of the Greenish, I've been thinking about the recent run of fairly major mis-identifications of birds that have sparked twitches and some furious outbursts on various social media: a very pale and distant Common Buzzard was reported on birding apps as the relocated Black-winged Kite, igniting a hundred-car dash for birders to Gwent and taking a couple of hours to sort out.  There is a growing momentum of opinion that rare birds reported should have as much proof as possible attached before being reported.  It's always going to be a battle between speed of report (birds move fast!) and veracity of identification, and the people working on the apps are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea on this one.  Damned if they do and damned if they don't, they're either not fast enough or not accurate enough, and realistically, it's actually down to a birder confidently identifying something and getting it wrong.

The last thing I want is to report the sighting of a bird I'm not sure of, and to that end, a photograph helps.  Especially when identifying a bird as difficult (for me) as a Greenish Warbler.  Sure, easy enough to ID when it sits in good light on the front of a bush, calling and showing every feature, but a different prospect when there are half a dozen pale Chiffchaffs and silently hunting Willow Warblers flashing at speed through tiny gaps in dense foliage. I know many birders of around my skill level will send photos to more experienced or more skilled birders to check before claiming a sighting, because nobody wants to be the person corrected on social media, or piled on in a WhatsApp group, or thought of as a stringer, a birding liar.  I wonder how many people would have believed my sighting of an April Bee-eater in Manchester this year if I hadn't got a photo, especially as nobody else got eyes on the bird?  Thankfully, purposeful stringing is rare, where people report birds that they simply haven't seen (though an interesting experience with Dotterels that likely never existed at the Great Orme earlier this year left me angry with a certain locally well-known liar).  My Grandma always said that it's better to ascribe bad experiences of others to incompetence rather than malice, and that's probably broadly true of most birders, with one or two high-profile exceptions.  That is, we make mistakes rather than set out to ruin someone's day.

But it did make me reflect on one of the themes of this blog: what possible reason is there for someone to lie about a sighting?  Is it desperation to have a bigger list?  To appear to be a more skilled birder - after all there is a certain cachet about being the finder of rare birds?  To become social media "famous" (because more followers means you're definitely more important, right?)?  These all boil down to the same thing.  Envy.  Jealousy of what others have seen, or how they're viewed as a person by the wider community.  But surely, the whole point of birding is that you are the only final arbiter of your experience.  You see what you see, and experience it for yourself, and lying about it only cheats you.  There is no prize for having a bigger year list/life list, and there is no real life positive implication about you as a person if you have more people approving your X posts (and the folly of believing that there is can be damaging to mental health).

I suppose the moral of the story is that I choose to believe people when they say they've seen something - misidentification is simply a mistake and we all make those - after all, I'll get over a missed bird that might have been strung, but a liar is always going to know deep down that they haven't seen what they claimed.  They'll always secretly be green(ish) with envy.