I and the Bird #16 :
15 things I don't like to hear when I'm birding...

The more I thought about it, the more I remembered some of the most extraordinary birding moments I've had over the last thirty years, and I thought I'd write them down...

The following therefore, is a list of "15 things I don't like to hear when I'm birding", beginning with a few harmless but frustrating phrases that no doubt we've all heard and ending with some choice sentences I hope I never hear again...

1. "What was that?" or "Did you see that?".
   Inevitably said by a birding colleague who's just caught a glimpse of something REALLY good, and who knows all too well that - no - I didn't see it, and that whatever it was has disappeared for ever...always a great start to any birding day :)
2. "You should have been here the other day - everyone saw it really well."
   Who hasn't heard this before? Said to me on so many occasions I can't even begin to think when the last one was, but possibly Point Pelee in spring 2005 when a group of us were looking for a remarkably confiding Kirtland's Warbler to be told by some grinning birders that it had already hightailed it to Michigan, but "You should have been here etc etc ". Grrr...
3. "Hmm, it doesn't usually rain this time of year..."
   Again, said to me on many occasions, that I no longer believe anyone who says it. Either I'm a one-man rainmaker or very unlucky, but the last time I remember hearing this phrase was on peering out through a storm-lashed windscreen in the normally bone-dry Kuwait desert in Feb 2005.
4. "Are you sure?"
   One of those phrases - like "Oh - they're not usually seen here"- that has a definite double-meaning, and is always spoken with a rising inflection and a raised eyebrow. What the questioner is really saying, of course, is "I don't believe you". Again said to me on so many occasions I don't remember the last time - though to be honest it happens a little less these days...
5. "Did you bring any leech-repellent?"
   I hate leeches. I can understand the value of most animals on this planet, but what the heck is the point of a flipping leech? Last said to me years ago as I stepped onto what I later found out was the notoriously leech-infested Bishop's Trail on Fraser's Hill, Malaysia. And, no, I hadn't...
6. "The Park's only open at weekends."
   How can a National Park only be open at the weekends? Last said to me at the entrance to a National Park I'd sent hours getting to outside Sao Paulo, Brazil by a staff member determined not to let the sweaty tourist through the gates. I got in eventually, after much pleading, and looking helpless and confused, thanks to a more sympathetic (and higher-ranking) staffer to who I'm very grateful...
7. "No, I wouldn't really say I'm a birder..."
   Said to me once on a trip to Brazil by the "bird guide" I'd hired as we drove on our way to a forest, shortly after I'd asked him what bird had made a call I'd just heard, and as I prepared to hand over the 150USD daily guiding fee he was asking me for...
8. "Personally I wouldn't wind the windows down here, there are lions everywhere - oh, told you so."
   Said to me by the wonderfully laconic Don Turner in the Nairobi National Park in 1991, as a huge male Lion suddenly stood up next to where we'd stopped the car to look at a koorhaan.
9. "The dogs here are rabid aren't they...?"
   Said to me by a birder as we walked close to an village in India and realised that several scrawny, but very mean-looking mongrels, were circling round us eyeing us angrily...and, yes, they are.
10. "Watch out for the Cobra..."
    Said to me once by a birding mate in Hong Kong as I stumbled along a path at Mai Po wiping the sweat out of my eyes and not looking where I was going. (And similar to the "Watch where you land, there's a Black Mamba over here" I heard once as I was in mid-vault over a low wall in Africa - I missed it by less than two feet...)
11. "People round here don't really like strangers."
    I kid you not. Said to me about four years ago by a drunken South African farmer and his heavily-armed colleague as he leant out of his 4x4 and just after they'd pulled up alongside me as I looked for Marsh Owls on "his" dirt-road outside Suikerbosrand National Park. One of the few times I actually wondered if I was going to get back to the hotel in one piece...once I'd explained what I was doing they turned out to be quite friendly actually...

12. "I seem to have set the hill on fire."
    Said to me in the Himalayas by one of the best birders in the world as he dropped a tissue he'd blown his nose on and tried to destroy by burning rather than leave as yet more litter, and as the dry grass we were standing in erupted into flames. The fire burnt for two days and destroyed acres of important pheasant habitat...(I won't name the birder to spare his blushes as it was a complete accident and I've never seen anyone look so inconsolable before or since).
13. "If you see anyone looking through the window keep really still..."
    Said to me by the unflappable Steve James as we bedded down for the night on a birding trip in the Chimanimani Mountains in Zimbabwe, warning me of the dangers of marauding Mozambicans crossing the border looking for tourists to rob. I slept for less than an hour that night, Steve snored contentedly until dawn...
14. "Don't move and it won't attack."
    Said to me by one of my two birding companions in Nepal's Chitwan National Park as a Sloth Bear Ursus ursinus burst out of the vegetation right in front of us. As I turned into a statue, the other two suddenly ran off in a line that left me dead-centre between them and the bear: fortunately it was as scared as I was and it ran off in the other direction...it took me days to forgive them.
15. "I think they're firing at us..."
    Said to me by a remarkably unconcerned Steve James (again) years ago as we drove round a corner in a remote part of Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, and chanced upon some poachers, and as the 'crack' of a rifle shot rang out through the air...I've never reversed a car so fast in my entire life.