British Birders – a separate subspecies?

I have only been in Britain a couple of times, and have yet to go birdwatching there (an Osprey at Birdfair doesn’t count). But the British Birdwatcher has certainly intrigued me for many years.

Never having seen them in their natural habitat, my impression of British Birdwatchers is based almost exclusively on studying them as vagrants or nomads in other habitats. Whilst living in southern Costa Rica, I was continually amazed by the frequency of incredibly well prepared British Birders that came through Tiskita Lodge: when meeting tourists who had flown in for a few days in the jungle, one could never guess how much they knew and how prepared they might be, but it was the Brits that surprised me most often: second day in Central America ever, and they had already memorized all the species that could potentially occur in the area, how to identify them, their calls, and are armed with questions about where they can find this one particular fruiting tree species and how to tell the immature of one species from the female of another. Now that was all very impressive, but the moment that got me shaking me head in amazement was one guest who had heard that there was a Panamanian hummingbird (can’t for the life of me remember what it was called) that we would see every now and again, that would mainly visit one bush near the main lodge building. This particular English gentleman was so determined to see this hummingbird that he spent an entire afternoon (6hrs!) staring at this bush – I did not see him break his concentration, I did not see him scratch his nose. He did not go to the toilet, he did not fiddle with his binoculars. I was concerned that he might not be breathing.

Tiskita Jungle Lodge - could you sit still for 6hrs?

It was heartbreaking to see the Black-and-white Hawk start to circle over the forest in front of the lodge, signalling the end of the day, and the end of our determined birder’s hopes of picking up the hummer before he left early the next morning. I honour and admire his determination. It left me nonetheless somewhat perplexed. What level of patience and determination does it take to sit motionless in the jungle for 6hrs in the hope of seeing one species?

Can this book explain why Brits are so funny? or why they are such good birders?

Something else that also really burned in to my mind when I think of British Birders was something that came up in a conversation with James Lees and Mike Weedon while we were birding in Kazakhstan a couple of years ago: the knowledge and ability of the average British birder is higher than anywhere else in the world. Whether this is true or not, I cannot begin to say, but it does seem to make sense.

Listen to "The Conference Calls" Podcasts - a crazy look in to British Birding.

Now I am sure many brighter minds than mine have looked at causality and development of the British birdwatching scene, but I’d like to hazard a guess at some of the reasons why it has turned out the way it is. If you have ever read Song of the Dodo, or anything by Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson, or anyone else interested in biodiversity over the last few decades, you would have heard of The Theory of Island Biogeography:

– location. a fairly large island in a good position to pick up rarities being blown out from west or east, making the chances of seeing something interesting a whole lot higher than, say, in the Alps (something most birds avoid as opposed to heading toward the island);

– time. Birdwatching has a relatively long tradition in the UK, allowing it time to grow and mature; develop well-established hierarchies, niches, more conservative voices, dissidents/punks and self-appointed noocracies;

– isolation. Being separated from continental Europe by both a little bit of water and language, British birdwatching culture could develop mostly in isolation from external trends and thoughts. In speciation, this is not only important in terms of the exchange of (genetic) information, but also for the concentration of the (genetic) information pool on the island. I’d suggest that this concentration effect has resulted in a stimulation of the learning process, of the cultivation and spread of knowledge, and the desire to want to know more. This has all, in turn, been spurred on by a competitive intensity driven to its foreseeable extreme by the fear of being labelled a “dude” and the ruling ornithological gentry (protectors of honour, holders of all wisdom and “morally and intellectually superior” aristokratia): eternal damnation for the passionate Sunday birdwatcher who got that PG Tips wrong or – potentially even worse – didn’t say anything about it because he thought he got it wrong anyway and then showed a – soon to be very p’d off – mate a month later;

Your first defence against being called out as a Dude is to look like a tramp. Photo by Alistair Thompson cc on flickr

– initial assemblage composition. Might I assume that hunting in the UK has traditionally been something more associated with the aristocratic classes, being forbidden to he general public, and in more recent history, tainted with a poor reputation; meaning that ordinary folk in the UK with an innate desire to develop a hobby/sport in the outdoors was somewhat more likely to end up in birdwatching than in hunting (with the reverse trend being seen on the continent).

Modern Ornithological Colonialism - spreading the good word.

Now I think this all suggests that there are some major regional factors that have influenced the divergent evolution of the British Birdwatcher and, given their unique society, communication strategies, behaviour, dress and geographical isolation, I believe there is at least cause to consider them a full and clearly distinct subspecies from other populations worldwide.