The Goal

My goal in writing this blog is to record the development of my interest in birding. My first few entries will be a little bit about me and where this interest comes from and thereafter I will simply be recording my sightings of birds and keeping track of where I am against the various goals I will be setting myself.

I should say from the outset that I am not a serious birder or twitcher. Colin Tudge, in his excellent book simply called 'The Bird' defines twitchers as people mainly interested in counting the different species of birds they see and birders as sort of amateur scientists. Although I don't like the label I would definitely be counted among the twitchers according to these definitions. I work in an industry where Microsoft's Excel is the software of choice which means I have a geekish fondness of manipulating data. I have spreadsheets for everything from paying off my mortgage to listing the books I read. My bird database is actually an Access database although I am a newby at Access so I am doubly an amateur. I have grown up with parents who are both lovers of nature so knowing the birds in the garden, for instance, is knowledge I have simply always known. This means that I became a birder long before I became a birder. Having two older brothers in a family that loves games I am fiercely competitive. Although I am only competing with myself in my birding (I really can't say twitching), it helps to have the competitive spirit. I love to travel so have a great opportunity of adding new birds to my list when visiting new places and finally my wife, though rolling her eyeballs as I write this, allows me to indulge my interest to a reasonable extent. My goal is not to become the kind of birder who spends every weekend waist deep in mud searching out birds or the type who flies off at a moment's notice to see a vagrant blown off course. I simply enjoy birds and I like the idea of writing about this pleasure.