Corey’s great report about his visit to the Adirondacks used the word ’skulking’, which reminded both him and Mike of a post I wrote a while back which discussed the meaning of several words us birders regularly use to describe birds that are hard to see. As you’re transferring everything over from your old blog, Charlie they said, why not put this one on the homepage? Well, who am I to argue with such blogging luminaries…?

Every so often I get an email questioning my views on everything from conservation to vegetarianism, usually from some numpty who’d like to do rather odd things to my backside with a shotgun. I kind of take them in my stride - I’m fairly sure that people with IQs that low couldn’t get to me if I gave them a sat-nav and my home address - but the other day I got an email which really hit hard.

This particular correspondent asked - and I hardly know how to say this - whether…excuse me while I gather myself, this is so hard for me - whether when I wrote my posts I used certain named words randomly or I actually intended them to mean different things?!! What! For a man often teasingly referred to as “The Great Pedanto” (you know who you are, JO) and who has been known to go back to blog posts more than a hundred times changing just one word at a time (once or twice anyway) this is a shocking attack…just shocking…

Hey, I’m exaggerating of course. Even I don’t take myself that seriously (despite what I suspect many of you think)…But what were the words that my rude (sorry) totally-within-their-rights emailing chum was suggesting I was using randomly? They were ‘wary’, ’secretive’, ’skulking’, and ‘inconspicuous‘. Don’t they - he/she queried - all mean the same thing? Don’t you really mean that you couldn’t get to see the bird properly and were just dressing up your lack of fieldcraft in fancy words?

I could just dismiss such talk as the ranting of a lunatic, but instead I thought I may as well try to explain what I mean by ‘wary’, ’secretive’, ’skulking’, and ‘inconspicuous’ (and if I’ve got time one day - after I’ve retired perhaps - I’ll go back through every post I’ve ever written and see if I’ve only just decided on the following definitions or have - God Forbid - been using them [gulp] randomly…

(Before I start writing, though, I know that blog readers are not always as fascinated by navel-gazing as the navel-gazers themselves, so to make this post WAY more interesting I asked the talented cartoonist Robert Seymour over at the very funny BirdBreath Blog if he’d come up with some illustrations so that visitors with short attention spans can at least have a laugh as they skip rapidly through my frantic attempts at self-justification…He said ‘yes’, and he’s done a great job as you can see below…)

Right, let’s get on with it.

Firstly though we should acknowledge one painful fact of life: we all have bad days. You know the days I mean, when we crash about like elephants disturbing birds in neighbouring countries let alone the ones in the immediate vicinity, when our optics simply refuse to point in the right direction, when no matter how hard we try we just can’t stifle that cough or sneeze, can’t avoid those dry twigs, and just can’t see ANYTHING…Gah, it’s frustrating when that happens, but happen it does, and no matter how we try to blame skittery birds for a poor day’s birding, when we’re in “car-crash mode” we’d startle a geriatric domestic budgie into flight never mind a wild bunting or pipit.

Under these conditions the (probably spurious) definitions and examples I’m about to proffer go by the wayside. So just for the sake of the following exercise, let’s assume that all is well with us both mentally and physically, that the sun is shining, that - in essence - we’re having a normal day, watching birds like a proper birdwatcher ie ‘normally’ (unless, like me when I’m jet-lagged, your normal state is “elephant” in which case you’re probably as confused as I’m getting and you can stop reading now and look at the cartoons instead…)

Okay, let’s (again) get on with it….[Please, Charlie, please]

According to the online Free Dictionary ’skulking’ means Marked by quiet and caution and secrecy; taking pains to avoid being observed; ‘wary’ means Marked by keen caution and watchful prudence; ’secretive’ means Having or marked by an inclination to secrecy; not open, forthright, and ‘inconspicuous’ (or ‘unobtrusive’) means Not readily noticeable.

They do sound pretty much like synonyms, but there are differences [So get to them Charlie, I have a life to live...] which I’ll now get to…(happy now?)

• Skulking:

Okay, here’s a word all us bad birdwatchers use ALL the time. “I couldn’t see it, it was a real skulker“. “Photograph? No, the b****y thing never showed itself - skulking little s*d.” “What did it look like? No idea - it skulked!!”…See what I mean?

Personally I think the Free Dictionary’s definition of marked by quiet and caution and secrecy is pretty accurate , but in the bird world it seems to blur what I consider to be differences between ‘caution’ and ’secrecy’.

What do I mean? Well, it’s just the simple truth that some birds skulk. Always have done, always will. It’s what they do. No vegetation is too deep for a skulker to skulk away in, no grass too long (as Robert’s Ring-necked Pheasant demonstrates). It’s a way of life, a survival strategy whereby a small bird keeps out of the way of larger ones, large birds keep out of the way of even larger birds - and both keep out of the way of birders of any size. Kind of secretive really…

What separates skulking from secretive behaviour though (at least, in the world according to Charlie’s Bird Blog). is that given time and patience a skulker - unlike a truly secretive bird - will often reveal itself when whatever danger it thought was there has passed. A skulker won’t leap out with a “Hey! Over here…”, but it will just sort of emerge and wander about (normally skulking Asian thrushes for example) or even feed on the edge of a bush (eg Dusky Warbler - a bird I grew up thinking was impossible to see until I learnt that trying to get a good look at skulkers by flushing them just DOESN’T WORK).

Yes, given the right circumstances, Skulkers can be seen. We may not always have the time, the patience, or the determination to see them - but see them we will IF we let them come to us and not bang about hoping to ’surprise them’ and especially not by thinking we’ll get a decent view by making them leap up like startled rabbits and expecting them to then miraculously pose in the open at eye-level long enough for us to get a once-in-a-lifetime photo…(ah, how many times have I hoped that would happen and been disappointed?).

Incidentally, an absolute classic example of a skulker that showed was the gorgeous overwintering Blue-winged Pitta I saw in the Singapore Botanic Gardens in Feb 2006. Notoriously difficult to see under normal circumstances (ie in a rainforest), this particular individual gradually became accustomed to the visitors (birders and the general public) who were always around but who obviously posed no threat, and started giving the most fantastic views…check out the link above if you don’t believe me…

So, yes, a skulker skulks - but not all the time…

• Wary:

‘Wary’. How does that possibly differ from skulking or secretive? Here is where I think Free Dictionary’s marked by keen caution and watchful prudence is just about spot-on (which is pretty big of “The Great Pedanto” don’t you think?).

Whereas I often think of a skulker as reactive, staying in cover and stopping whatever it was doing to assess any danger it feels threatened by, wary birds have a more proactive approach to life. They often feed out in the open or in clearings, but with ‘watchful prudence’. A wary species won’t ever wander over looking for hand-outs, but it won’t necessarily stop all activity just because some birder with big feet is crunching his or her way towards it. Wary birds tends to move away instead, all the time keeping one eye on the would-be observer and the other on the bugs or seeds it was searching for before being so rudely interrupted.

Of course given too much pressure a wary bird will flush, but it seems to me that they have a more reproachful attitude to being disturbed than a skulker - for example flying up to the top of a tree where it starts the equivalent of filing its nails while keeping a disdainful eye on the predator (or birder) below, rather than disappearing into deep cover for the next few hours.

I have to admit I find wary birds a little irritating. On the one hand you can see them, but on the other you can’t see them particularly well or get close enough to photograph them. Every step you take forward the darn wary bird will take two (their steps being so much smaller than ours): wagtails and some ducks do it all the time - keeping some sort of pre-determined distance between themselves and the would-be observer, often based - or so it seems to me - by working out the magnification of whatever optics you’re carrying and adding 10metres…

Of course given time a wary bird may well approach a little nearer. It may even get quite close if you sit still for long enough - but lift that camera or those binoculars to your eyes, and it’ll give that little shrug that says “Not today, buddy” and move away again, glancing backwards with that mocking look that the wary bird has got down to a fine art…not a pleasant experience, but one we’re all probably used to eh?

• Inconspicuous:

Okay, ‘inconspicuous’. Surely that means “hard to see” as well, doesn’t it Charlie? Doesn’t it?

Well, yes, it does, but the difference between ‘inconspicuous‘ and ’skulking’, ‘wary’, and ‘secretive‘ is - I think - down to the degree of how deliberate the ‘difficult to see’-ness is. I came to this conclusion (and the idea for this post) when I was in New York’s Central Park looking for Swamp Sparrows.

I’m going to cut a long story short (thereby breaking the habit of a lifetime to loud applause) and just say that I knew the sparrows were down in a small, swampy area in The Ramble called “the Oven”, but from the path above I simply couldn’t see them. Not a glimpse. Yet, when I went down into the Oven and sat quietly amongst the trees I could see Swamp Sparrows everywhere I looked.

So were these seemingly elusive little beasts skulkers, hidden away in the vegetation where I couldn’t see them? Not really, no. ‘Wary’ perhaps? Or ’secretive’? You know, none of those terms seemed quite right. Now that I was down in their space and on their level I could see that they weren’t hiding as such, they just seemed to be getting on with things, poking about as if I wasn’t there - just sort of being Swamp Sparrows…

The fact is that some birds - and I’d count Swamp Sparrows amongst them (which is a good thing or this post has absolutely no validity whatsoever) - are just difficult to see. They’re not especially trying to keep out of our way, they don’t normally hide away and scratch quietly about beneath layers of dense greenery - they are just small, quiet, and (yes) ‘inconspicuous’. Inconspicuous birds are all around us all of the time, doing what they do without fuss or bother. I find them quite humbling really. Us humans stroll about being loud and visible from outer space, while birds like, say, Northern Waterthrushes have so little impact on their environment they’re barely there (I guess an invertebrate finding itself disappearing down the throat of a hungry waterthrush would disagree, but compared with the chaos we cause I think I have a valid point).

‘Inconspicuous’ birds are there for anyone to see who wants to see them in fact, not just us birders who tend to be looking for them. If you’re not sure I’m right try the following experiment: go for a walk in a woodland with non-birding friends and after a few minutes ask them how many birds they’ve seen. The answer will be close to none. Now (depending which country you’re in) point out eg the finches hopping just off the path, the Treecreeper skittering its way up a tree trunk, the Kinglet or Goldcrest searching through the foliage just above their heads…and enjoy the look on their faces as a whole new world that there was there all the time opens up right in front of them…

• Secretive:

Ah, ’secretive’ - the grand-daddy of unhelpful avian behaviour, the polar opposite to ‘conspicuous’, a ’secretive’ bird would react in total bewilderment to the relatively open and confiding nature of your average skulker…if it ever came out of hiding long enough to actually see a skulker of course.

It may seem an obvious thing to say, but most birders will never see a genuinely secretive bird. Not just because they’re darn hard to see [well, duh, Charlie], but also because for some strange reason the most truly secretive birds live in the most truly inaccessible places. Unless you’re prepared to spend weeks camped out in chigger-ridden rainforests you can forget ever seeing most tapaculos for example. Without an almighty trek through mountains, snow-fields and crevasses some of the most beautiful of Asia’s pheasants (which seem frightened of the light, let alone a birder) will never appear on your list. Want to see a flufftail? I hope you’ve got plenty of spare time on your hands and you like standing around in swamps…in Africa…

I’ve never understood, frankly, why a small brown bird like, say, an ant pitta needs to be so secretive when it lives in habitat so inhospitable and difficult to move around in that humans have still never really got much further than penetrating its edges. Why bother? Whole flocks of birds could play rock music and roar up and down on motorbikes in there and we’d NEVER KNOW. Instead, though, they creep about up to their tibia in nematode-infested swamps or crawl about in total darkness where scores of leeches are waiting to suck them dry…

Seriously, are there really more predators in a thick tangle of vines and llianas acres deep than in, say, a savanna or a grassland where scores of birds sit out in the open? I tell you it doesn’t make sense to me (so Lord knows what you readers are making of it, come to think of it) but that’s how it is: you want to see ’secretive’ then you can forget strolling down to your local park and waiting a few minutes, you’re going to have to queue for hours at Embassies you’ve never heard of, get vaccinated till your arms look like colanders, stay away so long your family will cover the neighbourhood in “Missing” posters, and you’re going to have to suffer. Sorry.

So, there you go. That’s my rebuttal to the doubting Thomas or Thomasina who mailed me and challenged me to prove that the words I use to describe birds I don’t see very well are actually different in meaning from each other. To be honest it would have been easier just to delete the email, but who can resist a futile exercise in self-justification. Not me obviously…

Have I proved my consistency? I’m pretty sure I’ve never said that a Water Rail is secretive, because I think they’re just skulking instead. I reckon most pipits I’ve ever seen have been wary (though some are skulking too of course). I suppose the only way to check is to go through the whole of 10,000 Birds and see for yourself - because frankly I’m feeling a little weary right now and can’t face such a monumental (and completely pointless) task.

And can I just say that if you’ve managed to struggle through all of the above to reach this point expecting to find some sort of conclusion, then I apologise but at least Robert gave you some rather lovely cartoons to look at when you needed a break, eh?

Like to see more of Robert’s cartoons? Check out his excellent BirdBreath Blog