Twitchers' vocabulary
Some birdwatchers are keen rarity seekers and will travel long distances to see a new species to add to one of their "lists", e.g., life list, national list, state list, county list, etc. These fanatical birders are commonly known by the light-hearted slang term twitchers, particularly in the United Kingdom (though non-birders often mistakenly use twitcher as a synonym for birder or birdwatcher).
Comedian and celebrity birder Bill Oddie introduced many birdwatchers to the distinctive vocabulary that distinguishes twitchers from other categories of birdwatcher in his Little Black Bird Book (first published in 1980).
Examples of twitchers' vocabulary
- To dip out (or dip): To miss seeing a bird which you were looking for.
- To grip off (or grip): To see a bird which another birder missed and to tell them you've seen it.
- To burn up or flog: To beat around in the undergrowth hoping to flush a bird. A desperate measure and not a kind way to treat an exhausted migrant.
- Dude: A novice birdwatcher; slightly pejorative term. Not someone who knows their feather tracts!
- String:
- Noun: A dubious, "ropy" record.
- Verb: to claim such a record.
- List:
- Noun: a list of all species seen by a particular observer (often qualified, e.g. life list, county list, year list, etc.). Keen twitchers may keep several lists, and some listers compete to amass longer lists than their rivals.
- Verb: to keep or compile a bird list (lister is close in meaning to twitcher).
- Lifer: A first-ever sighting of a bird species by an observer; an addition to one's life list.
- Tick: An addition to a personal list (sometimes qualified as year tick, county tick, etc.). Life tick and lifer are synonymous.
- Crippler: A rare and spectacular bird that shows brilliantly, perhaps an allusion towards its preventing people from moving on.
- Sibe: A bird from Siberia (usually applied to rare migrants).
- First: A first record of a species (in a defined area, such as a county first).
Some species have nicknames: for example "RB Flicker" for Red-breasted Flycatcher, "Gropper" for Grasshopper Warbler, "PG Tips" for Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler etc. etc. Twitchers (and birders in general) will also use a mixture of scientific and slang terms for feather tracts and so on.