Triple Dip - when birding doesn't go right

An integral part of the birding experience, and certainly one I have encountered lately, is missing out on a bird you have targeted.  I've tried to communicate a little about how it feels to be a birder in my blog, and spoke today to a person who made me realise that if you glanced across the forty-odd posts I've put up this year, you'd think I was just having successful birding day after incredible wildlife experience all year long.  This is not the truth of mine (or any) birding, and contrary to the Tiktok-ification of wildlife watching, there's a fair percentage of failure involved.  This is not only obvious, and to be expected; it is to be embraced - where is the skill in following detailed instructions on an app to a location tagged with GPS, to see a bird that will not move?  Surely it's only the jeopardy of missing out on seeing the bird that makes a rare bird worth seeing, and, if we never miss out, how will we appreciate our good fortune when we see the bird?

This is a thing that we all rationally understand, though it doesn't always feel like this and we don't often react in rational ways.  In fact, though there have been a number of dips through the year, this past week has been remarkable for me making the wrong choices over and over, and having to deal with the feeling of missing out, and reacting in a very irrational way.

With two attempts to see Marsh Sandpiper in Oxfordshire and Gwent failed last weekend, it was off to Leicestershire to see a very obliging Baird's Sandpiper that had spent a day entertaining many at Eyebrook Reservoir.  Two hours and forty minutes of driving from 5am and we spent two hours scanning the mud as part of a crowd of dozens, and failing to find any small waders at all.  Hearing a report of American Golden Plover back home in Lancashire, we cut our losses and headed back to Freckleton near Lytham hoping that the high and receding tide would keep the AGP in place.  Four hours of scanning across every single one of 600+ mobile and distant Golden Plover across a mile of increasing mud exposure and we failed to find any Americans.  So that's three missed out of three in a week for rare wading birds, and it left me feeling bad.

Now that's not the worst part.  The worst part is that so many other birders on social media and WhatsApp groups have seen all the birds I missed, AND more.  They have been successful while I have not only failed once, but failed over and over again at a pursuit I believe I'm pretty good at.  The dips begin to make me doubt my skill as a birder.  Plus I'm trying for a Big Year, and all the pressure that goes with that makes me feel like I'm not going to reach 300 species, and after all the hours of driving, research, effort, money and thought that have gone into that project, it feels like the pressure has really taken the enjoyment away.  While it won't be the end of the world if I don't reach 300 species, we do have a human tendency to set targets and then judge against them, and when I feel failure lurking, the self-recriminations swirl and I can end up beating myself up - why didn't I go earlier?  Why didn't I stay longer?  Why did I pick that bird over the more obvious choice?

Failing like this can strike at more than your fear of missing out; it can strike at your self-esteem and self-belief.  It's that that causes so many birders to be grumpy, whiny, and defeatist in the wake of their own failure (and other people's success) - you know if this is you: it's definitely been me at points.  It's not missing a bird that matters; it's what that failure says about us in our own minds that we find so galling.  Rationally we all know that birds move. It's why we love searching for them - migration is literally the cornerstone of birding in the UK.  Being irrationally upset that a bird has left the place it was reported is odd because that is pretty much the expected behaviour of birds, but we all know that's not why we're really grumpy.  There's an element of feeling like you've wasted effort, time, money to get to see a bird and experience it for yourself first-hand, and that's valid frustration and natural.  But I would say that a bigger element of grumpiness is because we don't like to lose face - or maybe that's just me.  Other people saw the bird and I didn't, and we're all secretly comparing ourselves to other birders.  Our list is shorter, our skill is less, our fieldcraft less useful than that of others.  

But we also know that this is rationally ridiculous: we're grown ups, we don't (shouldn't) sulk, or have list envy.  So we subsume it in general wallowing in the dip, and we invest emotion in that species until we've seen the bird enough to thoroughly exorcise that demon.  

In fact what we should do is something quite the opposite.  We should laugh at ourselves a little, and especially our failures.  I have been in danger of taking myself and my failures too seriously in recent days, and this intensification of negative emotion is always a spiral - when does it ever make us feel better to overthink about the things we aren't good at or that we get wrong?  Surely those moments of frustration that we allow to stew and fester only make us act in negative ways - becoming more intense, less gracious to ourselves.  We rob our dips of power when we recognise the humour in them, and that then allows us to appreciate the things we benefitted from.  Laughing about how often I miss Barred Warbler enables me to turn that frustration into two positive outcomes: I steal the negative power of the failure by recognising it's importance in the scheme of things (ie, not at all important), and I generate determination to succeed in the future by learning from the causes of failure.  Was it something in my control?  Did I sleep in?  Put off making a decision to go for a bird?  Look in the wrong direction?  Fail to scan thoroughly enough?  Was I chatting and distracted at the wrong moments?  Was I daydreaming when the bird was moving and obscured?  Would I recognise this species if I was lucky enough to find one, and if not, where can I find out more about it?  

Today while missing the Baird's I saw Green Woodpecker, Cattle Egret and Ruff.  I bumped into a dozen friends and we compared notes and laughed a lot.  It was an enjoyable failure!  I might have failed to find the American Golden Plover, but I saw Merlin hunting Goldfinches and Greenshank hiding amongst a flock of Whimbrel.  I went to two new locations and saw wildlife.  I spent my day free under a big sky in a big habitat, and I enjoyed myself.  Sure, my list didn't grow, but it will, and then as well as my story of the week of the triple dip I'll have the story of the week where I just got all the luck.

And I'm actively delighted that my friends saw these birds too - I love it when people see new stuff, whether it's a member of the public at a twitch looking at Waxwings in my scope, or getting a friend on a bird I've managed to see before them; it's satisfying to help others.  So instead of cursing their luck or responding to their celebrations with dour joyless complaints about what I've not seen, I should be grateful that people I like are seeing things.  After all, they'll have had their own triple dip weeks, and if you haven't... well, believe me, it's only a matter of time!