A beginner’s guide to rarities

Boost your prospects of discovering a rare avian visitor that makes your heart flutter and your pulse race by following our step-by-step guide

Six steps to discovering your own avian rarities – birding will never be the same again

Some 35 years ago, I was a keen member of my local Devon Birdwatching & Preservation Society (DBWPS) group, based in the rural heart of the west of the county. Every once in a while, there’d be an indoor meeting and, at one gathering, an ageing gentleman mentioned that he was looking for a new home for his British Birds magazine collection. With a voracious appetite for increasing my teenage knowledge, I volunteered to take them all. Immediately I was drawn to anything relating to rare birds and soon all November issues were in a disorganised pile on the floor. These November issues were British Birds Rarities Reports, volumes that would become staple reading across countless nights when geography and English homework should have been the priority. I had other ideas. The meanders of an

How do I find a rarity? was a question I asked over and over again...

oxbow lake or Prospero’s sorcery were of less importance to me than knowing about a Gull-billed Tern or Bonaparte’s Gull. The quest for knowledge soared with each page turn, the names set against the rarest bird finds memorised. It was these ‘cutting edge’ people I aspired to be like. I wanted to find one of the birds featured upon the hallowed pages. But how would I go about it? ‘How do I find a rarity?’ was a question I asked over and over again. Full steam ahead to 2018 and almost four decades of birdwatching around Britain and Ireland have been very kind to me in regard to that heady schoolboy ambition. I’ve been fortunate to discover a few great birds, some of them very rare indeed, my initials laid down in county bird reports and the famous BB Rarities Report, too, each one of those entries stemming from six core elements that are at the heart of discovering something odd and unusual.