annashay 
Last spring, I went on my first birding holiday. That is not a sentence I thought I would ever write – but as the author of a book on the Victorian women who founded the RSPB (who knew?), birders have plucked me up as one of their own.
I am not a birder. I’m a writer. But since I’ve spent time hanging out with naturalists, a tourist in their world, birds have flitted into my life sideways. I’ve discovered that birding is good for the soul.
During lockdown, one of the most Googled questions was ‘Are birds singing louder?’ They weren’t – it was just that, for the first time, we stopped to listen. Birds became a lifeline to those shut up inside, their song bringing therapeutic benefit as well as joy. People in towns and cities took to gardening, and noticed they had more garden birds than they’d imagined. The year 2020 was a significant moment for our relationship with birds. Then the world cranked up to speed again.
But many women clung on to their new interest, discovering that you don’t need specialist gear, or the advice of twitchers, to enjoy simply watching birds.
Why women? Perhaps lockdown played to our strengths. A survey by the American Birding Association found that their male members focussed more on listing species, and travelled further to see rare birds. Women, on the other hand, birded closer to home and reported higher personal enrichment.
All-female birding groups are on the rise: Birds & The Belles in Yorkshire, the Feminist Bird Club in the US and now the UK, The Phoebes in South Florida, the Uganda Women Birders’ Club…
Personally, I’m happy to do it alone. For me, birding is a way of being still and present in the landscape. I’ve discovered that sitting in a hide at Rye Harbour, watching avocets and little egrets, calms my busy mind far more than a meditation class.
Peregrines photo courtesy of Urban Birder
There have been magical highs (nightingales at Knepp) – and more challenging highs (a nine-hour twitch with the Brooklyn Bird Club). But the moment I finally stopped being a tourist and started participating happened in 2021 at Titchwell Marsh, Norfolk, in the RSPB optics shop. I bought a pair of seriously expensive, pocket-sized Swarovski binoculars. And this was the game changer.
I am never without those binoculars. I pick them up every morning as I head out with the dog, and it has transformed the outdoors – whether in the park, on the seafront, in town or countryside. Every few paces I find myself stopping, listening, scanning, and seeing things that before I was blind to. Today, the first bird I spotted on the High Weald floodplains was a lapwing. Very rare: it’s on Britain’s Red List of threatened species. This lapwing was protecting its nest from a raven, rising and falling with elaborate acrobatics and a surreal, piping cry like a squeaky toy. That, I now know, is what lapwings do.
Once you’ve spotted a bird, you want to know more. There are identification apps galore, such as Merlin Bird ID. But using your phone wrenches you out of the moment and stops you from looking and listening. I prefer to go the analogue route: commit what I can to memory – eye markings, belly colour, stripes, song – then go home and leaf through my bird field guide.
The whole deliberate process has forced me into a rare place of mindfulness. It’s a gentle hobby, not an obsession, which is where I’d like to keep it – but birding has given a new edge to city breaks and work trips. I’ve watched peregrines nesting on cathedral spires from Lincoln to Salisbury. I’ve spotted scarlet tanagers in NYC’s Central Park. I’ve been mesmerised by fork-tailed red kites wheeling over the Chilterns.
Iberian Magpie in Extremadura, Spain. Photo courtesy of Urban Birder
So when my friend David Lindo, the ‘Urban Birder’, invited me on a short birding trip to Extremadura in central Spain, I thought I was ready to take my modest hobby to the next level. What to pack? The men take it all very seriously. High-tech Gore-Tex, khaki cargo pants, camo headgear. Women who bird do things more casually. Jeans, trainers, a sunhat, a raincoat. This is all you need. But don’t expect any energetic walking.
‘I’m an ambler, not a rambler’ said David, as we stopped for the millionth time in frankly awe-inspiring scenery. ‘Look up!’ he urged. ‘That’s all you need to do. Look up.’ I raised my little Swarovski bins while the boys fiddled about with their tripods. Twitchers like telescopes, the more expensive the better. I was amused to discover that male birders aren’t necessarily that fit: there is a lot of standing around.
In amongst the competitive banter, David holds up a finger. ‘Listen. Iberian Chiffchaff’. And this is how you learn. ‘Azure winged magpie. They land with their feet forward, like a plane,’ he says. And points. I look through his scope and, magically, the bird’s face swims into life. The magnification is so intense I can see right into its coal black eye. I can even see its eyelashes.
We were looking for Great Bustards. The rain came and went. Colours and clouds shifted over the great rolling, empty plains of Extremadura. Wildflowers rippled. There were no Bustards, but plenty of Griffon vultures, awe-inspiring birds drifting in circles on thermals above. Failing to spot a coveted species is all part of the process. Whatever happens, happens.
Serious twitchers keep a Life List, which too often leads to feather preening and one-upmanship at day’s end. I prefer to carry mine around in my head: a series of intimate, brief encounters, mostly with tits and finches.
I’m just a girl who birds a bit. But I might just have found the best antidote to modern life.
Tessa Boase goes birding
Get closer to birds: Birding books for non-birders
Birds, Art, Life, Death: The Art of Noticing the Small and Significant by Kyo Maclear
The Running Sky: A Birdwatching Life by Tim Dee
Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood by Adam Nicholson
Learn to identify birdsong with Shriek of the Week
Birdsong ‘walkshops’ with Charlie Peverett
Nightingale Safaris at Knepp Wildland, Sussex
Tessa Boase is author of Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds
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