A twitch is defined as an involuntary movement of one's muscle. However in the birding world. twitching means a different thing. According to the Bird Searcher blog, Twitching is a type of birding named for the most enthusiastic kind of birder, one who “twitches” at the site of a rare bird, overflowing with excitement that leaves them gasping for air every time.
Last Sunday afternoon, Cheta Chua messaged me asking if I was going to Twitch the Black Drongo, a common bird elsewhere but very rare in the Philippines. In fact it is not considered a regular migrant but a vagrant (in other words, malamang naligaw lang). After describing the location to me, and after making sure that I still did not have this bird on my list, I decided to go birding this morning. The chance to add a lifer to my list was too much to resist.
I arrived at the site a little after 8am and saw a birder on the right side of the field. So I drove to where he was. It turned out to be Robert Lim, whom I met at LPPCHEA during the Ruddy Kingfisher craze last October. A few minutes later, at approximately 8:20, I saw a black bird perch on a bamboo clump maybe 40 meters away. I snapped a couple of photos.
Black Drongo
Upon seeing the fork tail, I knew that this was the target bird. Showed my screen to Robert and started walking towards the bamboo clump but not in a direct way so as not to spook the bird. But before we could get in position it flew away and we waited, and waited, and waited... Romz Lopez showed up and after about 20 minutes (he had been on the other side since before 7am). We spotted a couple of birders in the distance. By around 9:45, we decided to move to the other side of the creek. There we met Harry and Nenita Miller, Christian Perez, Bram and his wife and Tonji and Sylvia Ramos.
A little after 10am, Harry gave a shout and we all converged on his location. The Drongo was perched on the small acacia tree where Robert and I were two hours earlier. We all took insurance shots and made our way nearer. We probably got as close as 35 meters before the bird flew to the bamboo clump where I saw it earlier. Sharing a couple of docu shots.
Back to twitching, I don't really consider myself a twitcher, at least not to the level of other birders (whom I will not mention ;-) ). But I came across this description in the Bird Searcher blog:
"You know you are a twitcher if you have an assortment of lists to document your birdwatching which can include, but is not limited to: a life list, a county list, a provincial list, a state list, or a national list."
Well... I guess I am a twitcher (occasionally)...
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