Twitching by numbers: A birder's account of his hectic life as he chases rare species across Britain and Ireland

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The idea of tanking it down the motorway and ultimately along iffy back roads when you’re probably tired just for the chance to catch a glimpse of a rare bird is not a good idea, if it was just your own life/health that might be acceptable, but in a fast moving heavy lump of metal it’s never just about you. Also there is the problem of disturbance of rare birds often with twitchers in there hundreds at least. Re the rare birds themselves it can’t be much fun if you’re an absolutely knackered off course migrant and hundreds of people descend creating a bit of a commotion. For some twitchers, travelling many miles to see a rare bird seems to lift their spirits to new levels of exhilaration.

How refreshing, therefore, to come across Twitching By Numbers - a birder's account of his hectic life as he chases rare species across Britain and Ireland.This one can’t be blamed on twitchers, but there have also been cases where high profile birds have been shot – a red footed falcon in Shropshire and a little bustard in Norfolk – the latter was found on a road verge where it was highly visible. He has spent tens of thousands of pounds and travelled tens of thousands of miles chasing rare birds.

I've just spent the last year writing a book about the last 24 years of twitching birds in Britain and Ireland. I didn't see a copy to read, no idea if any other "unknowns" did, but I do know that he paid a considerable sum to someone who "edited it". In that time, you must have seen numerous changes in attitudes to how we approach birdwatching, habitat protection/creation and conservation. He is clearly something of an obsessive, and his other past hobbies have included plane spotting and stamp collecting. I offered him some advice and in fact had a long conversation with him about the pitfalls of getting a publisher and self publishing (I have done both).

Innuendo and/or explicit images were also a mainstay of the Carry On and Confessions of movies that were popular in the 1980s and before. I’m still bemused that the author felt compelled to water down/ delete certain sections just because a single magazine columnist condemned the book having identified what she deemed to be ‘sexism’.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The one where pictures of raptors in flight away from the camera in the near dark at the edges of tracks and forests allows their identification from memory of a two-second sighting when you weren’t expecting it so you didn’t have a pair of night-vision binoculars handy. Perhaps he ought to publish two editions - the revised sanitised version and the original, the latter to contain a warning on the cover that some of its content may cause offence to certain readers. Every day, we all encounter a myriad of things that cause personal irritation, inconvenience or even offence, but we shrug them off, look on the bright side and just get on with life - we don't all rush to Twitter to condemn.Luckily at Leighton Moss no charge for permits for members, but member had for admission at lots of reserves. There were some reserves of course that were open every day such as the RSPB’s headquarters The Lodge Reserve but closed around 5. That takes a lot of bottle, but he has been rewarded with the satisfaction of standing, unsupported, on his own two feet. There are stories of sticks being thrown at bushes so birds would be flushed out to get a better look at them, and exhausted, agitated birds flying from bush to bush until they were nabbed by a sparrowhawk.