GRUMPY OLD BIRDER

What’s the one bird that has so far eluded you? asks Bo Beolens

DO YOU HAVE a bogie bird? One that, despite not being rare you keep failing to connect with, especially after passing someone saying it’s ‘showing well’! How about what US bird writer Al Batt calls an ‘onion’ bird? That’s a bird you so badly want to see it makes you cry tears of joy and pent-up emotion. Mine was Wallcreeper, a bird I first saw on a cigarette card 60 years ago; immaculate slate grey plumage made glorious by vermillion wings. When I finally connected with this glory on a boulder as we crossed a northern Indian riverbed in a jeep, tears rolled down my face. The twitching community has loads of terms describing esoteric bird categories, their own canon of bird names, mostly compressed into monosyllabic bursts like ‘sprawk’ (Sparrowhawk) or shorthand like ‘P G Tips’ (Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler). Generic terms include ‘plastic’ for any feral birds not on the official British list, such as Emperor Geese or escapees like Hooded Merganser that might be confused with those blown across the Atlantic by October storms. I’ve also heard a term I hate, ‘rubbish birds’, referring to everyday birds one might expect to see even in

When I finally connected with a Wallcreeper, tears rolled down my face