Where species meet

摘要

As I followed bird spotters around the centre of a large city, looking for some of Britain's rarest species (black redstarts), something struck me. Bird watching in a city is different. Compared with the mostly serene atmosphere of a hide, where 'twitchers' sit for hours on end, directing their expert vision through large lenses, hardly moving a muscle, urban birding is a much faster and looser game. While thankfully the habit of shooting any unknown bird in order to identify it is long gone, the rural birders still resemble snipers, patiently waiting for their targets to wander into their field of vision before being tracked with skill and precision by the hidden lens - eye - body. My urban bird ecologists were, to carry the warfare metaphor a little further, more like urban guerrillas. We clambered over walls, trespassed on railway lines, rushed across roads, carried kit that was altogether more mobile and more modest, and together with the birds, we competed with the sounds and movements of a city waking up for another day of rushing about.