There comes a time in life when you just have to say what you feel!
I think that a lot of birders have lost their feeling for birds in general. At the moment we are really strapped for cash, I kid you not!. Money is so low that we have put our house up for sale, and I had to sell my expensive bins & scope to get some money.
Last year was not as good as previous years. Guests were 50% down, guided trips were also fewer.
This year we have very little bookings, so we are now very worried that we may go under.
Also last year I had a serious op in Plovdiv, and all our savings paid for the treatment. However life goes on.....I still feel 30, and I keep myself fit, but since the op & with all the stress I am begining to feel all of my 57 years.
Anyway we have just had a small group of people stay with us and go out on trips, and thats when it hit home.
They arrived early evening, no time to unload their hire minibus, they just thrust into my hand ( I was actually offering to shake hands in a warm welcome) a note with a list of birds they wanted to see.
Nothing else mattered, and that was the whole theme throughout their stay. They showed no interest in any common birds I pointed out, they were not even interested in a nesting pair of Peregrines. They did show some interest in a lone male Nutcracker, but only briefly.
Apart from the LIST, they only other interest they showed was in my bino's
" So you dont have good binoculars then for a guide".....WHAT!.... a name on a pair of bins!!!!
This was a comment I did not expect!
Well let me tell you, my Bushnell H2O 8x42's are brilliant, and affordable.
Not wanting to debase my self by explaining our current money crisis, I let my knowledge & bins speak for themselves.
We were in fact at Trigrad scanning for Wallcreeper, there they were all scoped up to the nines, with their expensive kit for over an hour, it's no good, they said, with strained neck muscles, nothing doing......thats funny I replied, I'v been watching a displying male for the past 15mins!!!!!!
WHAT! well you thought the world had stopped. At the end of the day, I said confidently, the birds dont care what label is on your bins, it's all about knowledge & observation.
Is birding getting designer labeled?
This story is getting to long so I will sum up. We all started birding because we loved the birds we saw, YES. Well for me it has never been about a tick in a book. Dont get me wrong It is nice to see new birds, but dont forget the ones that not only got you there, but are there everyday.
Me I am a tit man, Ok lets get the jokes out of the way, I'v heard them all before!. I love small birds, thats why I do most of my birding in woods or forests.
Even my patch is a small mountain track, tall spruce & old pines, alpine meadows, thick wooded areas with a couple of small waterfalls.
For me I love to see all the regulars everyday, I did BTO BBS field reports for 5yrs, never got bored.
The regular birds help you maintain a balance, they keep you grounded, they sharpen your observation skills and they help turn up the little gems that make an appearance when you least expect them.
I am fascinated with the perfect shape and size of the acrobatic tits, my favorites are the crested & long-tail tit's. I find searching for birds in thick cover, challenging & rewarding. And to top it all off, they dont care what bins I use.
Yes I miss my scope when I am trying to observe a bird a distance, but family needs come first. Even today when I was scanning for Pallid Swift's I needed my scope, but its not the end of the world.
So please remember to stay focused, enjoy what you do everyday, with the everyday birds, and it will make your other sightings even more rewarding..............Well that's my opinion anyway!
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