Watch The Birdies
The Age
Thursday October 16, 2008
Nick Galvin finds that birdwatching can make gripping television.
'WE'RE gonna win this f---in' thing!" chant the four members of the Hunter Home Brewers team in unison, before heading off to do battle, beers and binoculars in hand.Welcome to the adrenaline-fuelled, high-energy, cutthroat world of extreme ... er ... birdwatching.The Brewers are about to compete in last year's annual twitchathon, a competition that improbably combines elements of the Bathurst 1000 with the scientific precision of a biology field trip.Teams have 24 hours to spot as many species of birds as possible. During the competition they often drive hundreds of kilometres to visit as many different habitats as they can. Routes and techniques are kept closely guarded secrets and competition is unbelievably fierce.The Hunter Home Brewers is one of three teams followed by the cameras in Greg Woodland's highly entertaining documentary, Chasing Birds."The Brewers consider themselves to be the young guns - all beer and burgers," says Woodland.Their "enemies" are the Whacked Out Woodswallows, lead by highly competitive biologist David Geering. The third team in the film is the genteel Hunter Thickheads, who represent the "Earl Grey and fruitcake set", to the younger Brewers. But even the Thickheads have their moments as they get swept up in the excitement of competition."Sometimes we almost forget to have morning tea," says Thickhead Liz Crawford happily.Even Woodland confesses that he got carried away at one point, overstepping the documentary maker's "code of detachment" and getting involved in a scene he was shooting."The Brewers got a bit too sure of themselves," he says. "Literally at one point they were saying to each other, 'We've got too much time on our hands' and were lying around in a park doing nothing, drinking cans of beer. I urged them to get off their arses and get going because the other teams were hot on their tails. It was very much a hare and tortoise situation where the older folks were the tortoise and the Brewers the hare."Last year's twitchathon was Geering's ninth but the rest of the year he says he doesn't have much time for twitchers, the obsessive list gatherers of the birdwatching fraternity."To me it's a frivolous pursuit," says Geering, who is an authority on the endangered regent honeyeater as well as being a breeder of champion Barnevelder chickens. "But the twitchathon is basically my one weekend a year when I can be frivolous."Geering's passion for birds dates back to his childhood growing up in Wauchope."I'd be forever disappearing down into the bush," he says. "My aunty gave me a beaten-up pair of second-hand binoculars and I'd often jump on my pushbike and disappear all day to look at swamps and what have you."Alongside his encyclopedic knowledge of native species, Geering, who works for NSW's Department of Environment and Climate Change, also confesses he loves to win."Everything I do I have to do well," he says. "If I'm going to spend the weekend birdwatching in something like the twitchathon then I want to win the thing."Among experts such as Geering, being able to almost instinctively recognise a particular species is a highly prized skill known as "jizz"."It's the ability to recognise a bird with just a fleeting glimpse," he says. "Something can fly past and you'll say, 'That's a such-and-such', and... inevitably you are right."Woodland says the level of technical skill he witnessed was awe-inspiring."They really are unbelievable," he says. "They were doing an average of nine birds an hour. That's really fast work."But for all their bravado and competitiveness, it's obvious from Chasing Birds that the teams have a genuine affection for each other and respect each other's ability.This is underlined by the fact the competition relies entirely on honesty. More than half the members of the team have to positively identify the bird in question for it be recorded - and if a team says it has seen a bird, there are no questions asked."It is very easy to cheat," says Chris Herbert, of the Hunter Thickheads. "It is all on an honour system. But I don't think anybody would do that. There's no joy in doing that."Chasing Birds is on Thursday at 9.35pm on ABC1.
© 2008 The Age
