Twitching by numbers: A birder's account of his hectic life as he chases rare species across Britain and Ireland

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The book details what happens during my twitch, credits finder and categorises each rarity (1-year, 2-year, 3-year, 4-year, 5-year, 10-year, 20-year and lifetime). The one where pictures of raptors in flight away from the camera in the near dark at the edges of tracks and forests allows their identification from memory of a two-second sighting when you weren’t expecting it so you didn’t have a pair of night-vision binoculars handy.

Also lots of reserves where no permits where needed such as the Inch marshes in Scotland was only open a few days a week and only for part of the year.However, the more rounded account contained in this book is of a man with some acts of considerable kindness to his name, who has suffered from depression in the past and who happily acknowledges that he might be ‘on the spectrum’. The pace of his fascinating narrative races on with barely a pause for breath, and, by the end of the book (which comes all too quickly), he has covered 25 glorious and super-eventful twitch-filled years. Driving an unnecessarily large and heavier car to keep up with the Jones’s isn’t just an added burden re inflated air pollution it means any accident involving them will be more serious than it would have been – especially for cyclists and pedestrians and obviously children – a bad situation being made even worse.

Insert joke about tits here, but seriously this is why women still feel so unwelcome in the birding community. Our reliance on personal transport because of underfunded public transport (and many people’s preference for the former) means an utterly savage proportion of the population have been involved in serious accidents – I’ve known people who’ve been killed in car crashes, who doesn’t? Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.Not deeply, but I am certainly interested in this book because it is a very clear description of the fieldsport of twitching from the viewpoint of a keen exponent.