THE journey for a twitcher is one of a continuous treasure hunt – for bird sightings.

Armed with a sturdy pair of boots and binoculars, the Aerogard, the 400 page Simpson & Day Field Guide to the Birds of Australia, camera, and Michael Morcombe ‘s birds of Australia songs and calls app on your phone, you are ready to venture forth.

The November arrival of the long-billed Dowitcher at Victoria’s inland Lake Tutchewop, had all the twitchers, well... twitching in earnest. This interloper from the US was completely off track and out of season, but once word went around, twitchers country wide raced along the Murray Valley Highway to Mystic Park, to set up watching camps around the lake.

For a twitcher, honesty in sightings and their recording and reporting is everything – the honour of the game.

Twigs Road, Bears Lagoon, is as good a place as any to find birdlife, and for twitcher Shirley Hope, it’s where the song of a bird, as yet unrecognised, led to her lifelong interest, the call of the twitcher’s life.

Shirley says for her, it’s always been the thrill of the ‘hunt’. Being able to recognise and document what bird she had seen and where she was at the time of the sighting, gave real purpose to her camping trips.

“Once I became a virtuoso of those binoculars, I was off.”

 Milestones for twitchers are good too, marking each sighting on the list of 754 possible Australian birds you might see in your travels. In 2005 Shirley had documented 268 different bird sightings, and this year she has reached 346, diligently recorded on her Atlas Project ‘bird bible’ sheets. (Pictured)

“The Department of the Environment set up their Atlas project to collate a map of all Australian birds, a few years ago now, and the worksheets are terrific.

“I wasn’t into the Gould League of Bird Lovers at school, and we certainly didn’t collect eggs as kids, but every now and again Dad would point out a bird and we would listen to its call to see if we could identify it again later. 

“The black-faced cuckoo shrike was a favourite, and the butcher birds; they sound delightful.

“The most thrilling finds more recently have been sightings of the rare Gouldian Finch, number 741 in the book; it even has a UC for uncommon next to it.

“I was staying at Willaroo Station west of Katherine in the NT. It was just on dusk and I went for a walk and was still kilometres from home, when it flew up into a tree. I grabbed the binoculars to get a close up look.

“It had flown in from nearby Gregory National Park.”

Shirley’s eyes light up as she recalls some of her other ‘finds’ , like the comb-crested Jacana walking on a lily pad in the tropical north (pictured).

“It was only 24 centimetres high,” Shirley says measuring the short distance between finger and thumb, “and it was so dainty as it stepped over the lily leaves.”

The colourful characters she has met in her travels are nearly as interesting as her twitching activities. 

“I was camping somewhere west of the Kimberley, when I saw this chap in camouflage gear start to get a bit agitated. That gear is a sign of a serious twitcher and as he grabbed his mobile phone and went to rush past me, I heard the unmistakable bird calls coming from his mobile. I hurried alongside him and asked if I could come. 

“A swift nod was the hasty reply and off we went. As soon as he got into a clearing he stopped and replayed the sound of the chestnut-breasted quail thrush again, and lo and behold, one of them flew down to have a look at this new ‘mate’ and the possibilities open to an enterprising chestnut-breasted quail thrush.

“I realised I was an amateur compared to this chap.”