Twitching by numbers: Twenty-four years of chasing rare birds around Britain and Ireland

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The idea of tanking it down the motorway and ultimately along iffy back roads when you’re probably tired just for the chance to catch a glimpse of a rare bird is not a good idea, if it was just your own life/health that might be acceptable, but in a fast moving heavy lump of metal it’s never just about you. Evans also insists he has been the victim of underhand tricks, citing an incident when he was racing to see a rare bird in Scotland. The human fallout and carnage from this reverence for the supposed personal freedom brought by a car (often to sit in a traffic jam with all the others enjoying their ‘freedom’ of the road) is horrendous and really deserves to be brought up alongside the environmental cost. Nevertheless, the extra rounded account contained on this e-book is of a person with some acts of appreciable kindness to his identify, who has suffered from despair up to now and who fortunately acknowledges that he is perhaps ‘on the spectrum’. Photograph: Andrew Testa/The Washington Post John Lees, left, and Garry Bagnell observe a shorelark in Great Yarmouth.

The Wryneck: Hurricane in a teacup? Twitcher on back foot

The Wryneck says: Mr Bagnell is unlikely to win any awards for chivalry, but, in fairness, he did not set out to be a role model for other birders. The icing on the cake is that he is also a talented artist whose delicate and charismatic illustrations (notably the exquisite ovenbird on the front cover) enhance the book no end.Any author who deviates from what is considered decorous and appropriate enjoys no licence - he (or she) risks being singled out and pilloried with opprobrium. What the author thinks are “interesting” details of a twitch have been reduced to exact start and arrival times, lists of the people who were present and strange descriptions of the definitive field identification points which he saw to validate his “tick” and detailed accounting of what he ate and the cost. I loved the ‘See you in a couple of days, darling’ attitude when the Mega alert landed and he was off on another adventure.

Twitching by numbers: Twenty-four years of chasing rare birds

The boat he and 12 others had hired died in choppy waters, forcing a daring rescue by Her Majesty's Coastguard. The child died and subsequently my friend has spent a lot of time dealing with mental health issues – that it wasn’t his fault makes no difference and it won’t be something his own kids will forget either he had just picked them up from school. Once notified of a sighting, the service issues urgent messages to its 21,000 subscribers via pay-by-the-month pagers and smartphone apps.Within the world of twitching, there are countless rankings – lifetime lists, annual lists, semiofficial lists, slightly more official lists – which are predicated on evidence. I feel that the reason behind the author’s wish to publish is purely to put into print his need for vindication and “proof” for each rare bird tick on his UK life list and validation of his, in my opinion, unjustified ego. It was a new bird for him, and in all the excitement of rushing to see it, he just keeled over and died," Evans said.

Garry Bagnell, a memoir of his ‘Twitching by Numbers’ by Garry Bagnell, a memoir of his

You’d have been on the prime of the record in 1987, apart Ron Johns, in the event you had seen a paltry (I jest! One of the most infamous dips came as Webb pursued a long-tailed shrike in the Outer Hebrides off mainland Scotland. A smartphone app to help British birders is being advertised as an essential tool when "there have even been recent cases of violent clashes between bird watchers as people desperately try to get the very best spots".

All the same twitching is a far less damaging way to be obsessive about birds than standing in a butt and try to shoot as many as possible that have been driven towards you by a bored teenager looking for beer money. And who cares that Garry Bagnell has seen 553 bird species in Britain and Ireland (which puts him way behind Steve Gantlett on an estimated 590 species)? Evans, who dubs himself the "judge, jury and executioner" of birdwatching in Britain and keeps his own twitcher rankings, has long been challenged by 41-year-old grocer Adrian Webb.