COOL? YES, REALLY!

Tibbs Jenkins reveals how the past year has turned thousands of us into accidental birdwatchers

‘THE PLEASURE I GET FROM HEARING THE FLUTTER OF WINGS IS EMBARRASSING’

wings as he lands on my wall and cocks his head quizzically, eyeing me up through the window and patiently waiting for me to distribute his food, is almost embarrassing.

One lucky friend of mine filmed a man cycling through London’s Hyde Park with one pigeon on his shoulder, another on his hand and a seagull on his head. The video has now been viewed close to 30,000 times on @pigeonsdoingthings.

Talking of Hyde Park, head to the ‘parrot tree’, about halfway down the Serpentine just before the Henry Moore arch, and you’ll find gaggles of tourists cooing at the green parakeets. Many new birders cite these exotic ring-necked creatures as their ‘spark bird’ – the one that first piqued their interest. Their presence in London is shrouded with mystery; some claim that a pair were released by Jimi Hendrix on Carnaby Street in the 60s, others that they escaped from Ealing Studios during the filming of The African Queen in 1951. More probable is that their presence is a result both of releases and escapes during the 60s, when birds as pets were as popular as cats and dogs.

The combination of pandemic and technology has shot birding into the stratosphere, particularly for millennials and Gen-zers. Especially popular is the mobile phone app ebird, now the largest worldwide database of bird sightings with over 800,000 users. The app makes the hobby feel like both a game and a community – users can follow each other’s checklists as they log their discoveries, tap into sightings and be ranked against other users for their bird tallies. Especially exciting is when someone sees a ‘lifer’ – the first time they’ve spied a particular species. Users can share this information, alerting other members and causing those near the spotting to whiz to the location in the hope of also getting lucky. Other popular apps to identify your bird are Merlin and Smart Bird ID: simply upload an image or a phone recording of their song and it will tell you the species.

Meanwhile, the number of people using the RSPB’S online bird identification tool shot up by 95 per cent in 2020. Many