
Forty Years a Twitcher We all twitch to a certain extent, it is merely travelling to see a new bird, but the term in birding circles, as opposed to the media, still implies a certain effort, beyond normal birding. Many people twitch occasionally, there is a great range from obsessive, going for everything twitching to local county twitching, or occasional when it's a bird you particularly want to see. In my case it's now the last category, but in the last part of the 20th century Ann and I were pretty much full-on twitchers. However, as in everything, twitching has changed. We used to get derogatory comments about "other people's birds" and people going to see birds they'd never heard of, now it's about carbon footprints. But sadly, the one thing that has changed is-it's not so much fun. At one time, everybody knew everybody (or knew of them), and complete strangers would jump in each others cars at the drop of a hat to go and see a rarity. Most of t...