After a long overnight drive and a dawn vigil, successful or otherwise, at some point hunger and thirst drives the knackered twitcher to the nearest source of sustenance, though sometimes the risk of being away from the site for the vital moment is too great, and birders will stand all day with rumbling tums, slowly dehydrating. A few (myself included) quell the hunger pangs by smoking, but that’s hardly a recommended solution! The whole thing is self-defeating, of course – if your blood sugar is that low, your faculties are impaired, your enthusiasm wanes, and each individual’s chances of actually relocating the bird diminish considerably. But there’s always the hope that the one brainiac who actually remembered to stuff a bottle of water and a packet of biscuits into a backpack will remain focused enough to pick the bird up when (if!) it finally appears, to the relief of the stumbling masses.
Sometimes there’s a handy café nearby, and on a big twitch, especially one that’s successful early, it will quickly fill up with hungry birders wolfing down cholesterol-laden full English breakfasts. I have personally witnessed one big twitcher (OK, Paul C) put away two Olympic breakfasts one after the other at a Little Chef somewhere in Yorkshire. But sometimes there’s just a little local shop, and the usually limited choice leads many to the breakfast that has become known over the years as the ‘full twitcher’s’ – a Mars bar and a can of Coke.
Then there was the time of the male Pallid Harrier on Orkney in June 1995. Not a big deal now – I’ve seen three in Somerset – but at the time this was a huge chance to unblock a near-mythical bird. RBA organised a special birders’ charter, including ferry ticket from John O’Groats and transport to the site, for just £25 a head. Unsurprisingly, there were many takers, and four full-size coaches left Burwick ferry terminal for the atmospherically named Burn o’ Hillside somewhere near Dounby on Orkney mainland. Over 200 ill-prepared birders, knackered from up to 12 hours overnight in the car to get to the ferry, ended up stood in the middle of nowhere in thick fog, each of us knowing that the bird had been present for weeks, paired with a female Hen Harrier, before news broke. That a few in the know had already sneaked up in the previous few days and seen it (hence the joke twisting the RBA slogan – ‘News you can trust from the team that’s been’) did not help, and things got even more fractious when the bird appeared briefly out of the fog for about half the crowd while the other half missed it. There were male Hen Harriers around too, of course, and those of us who had seen it were heavily questioned about why it wasn’t just one of them. Then the fog lifted and the bird gave great and prolonged views to all – the relief was palpable!
Another blessed relief was that a local café had got wind of what was going on and, with an eye to an unexpected opportunity, at some point in the proceedings a small van appeared, chock-full of sandwiches, snacks, tea, and soft drinks. The assembled birders descended on it like a pack of ravening wolves, and pretty much emptied it in minutes, then had another decent go when they returned a short while later having stocked up again. I hope they made a bucketload of extra cash that day – it was very welcome indeed.
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