The intensity of locating something so small and quick requires both force and passivity. Many birders spend long days in nature looking for an example of a particular species, and then, on finding it, do nothing. They just jot something down, or maybe take a photograph. This makes their fervour, the ‘nakedness of their seeking’ and ‘so-public twitching hunger’, as Jonathan Franzen, a birder himself, has put it, mysterious and, to me, somewhat off-putting.
