Why birders are crazy

Us birders are a crazy bunch. We have odd habits and people who aren't birders don't understand us. We get up early. Really early. We drive to unheard of places that no-one other than birders have even heard about. We drive and walk through informal settlements with binoculars hanging around our necks as if we don't have a care in the world. We confer furiously with each other about some or other blob in the distance. We type into our smart phones or list birds on little black hardcover books that barely fit into our pockets. We nibble a lot and tend to eat unhealthy snacks, just to fill the holes in our tummies between ticks. We own a pair of gumboots and know how to use them. We own numerous tubes of sunblock and inevitably forget to use it. Our headgear smells of mouldy linen along with our Drimacs which are kept rolled up in a backpack or tossed onto the back seat of our cars. Most of us own a steel flask that is battered and bashed but still keeps coffee and hot water, hot. We consider rusks to be a food group. We know how to take care of ablutions in seconds on a busy road. If we don't already own a 4x4, we know another birder who has one and we abuse the relationship ruthlessly to get to those unheard of places. We check our smartphones regularly throughout the day for Facebook updates on the locality of some hard to find species. We count lifers. We have the entire southern part of Africa broken up into tiny little blocks and we even count the birds we see inside those little blocks. Technology has become part of our daily activities and we struggle to remember the old days and how we ever birded without it. The longer the camera lens, the deeper the pockets. We tolerate the uninitiated but not the boasters or the liars. Our employer never gives us enough vacation days in a year. We dream of jobs that would pay us enough to stay out in the field to do what we love, every day. We understand a 2 terabyte hard drive is the start of a collection, not enough to contain all the bird photographs we will ever take in our lifetime. We're frustrated birding in national parks as we can't get out of our cars and stalk something small and brown that just flew into the undergrowth. We only stop for animals long enough to look for an oxpecker with a yellow bill. Red Bull is our friend. We're always planning the next outing or negotiating with spouses for time away from them and the kids. We live for the next adventure. Love us and know you will always need to keep the car filled with petrol because we never know when the next rare bird alert might arrive in our inboxes.