Do people go birding while inebriated? There is the blog The Drinking Bird, but what about the drinking birder? Birdchick hosts Birds and Beers but that is held in bars and the birds tend to be discussed, not seen. There is a painfully bad song called “Drunk Bird Watching” on You Tube but the only “bird” seems to be someone saying “hello” like a caged parrot. In researching this blog post I did stumble across a blog I had not heard of before entitled The Drunkbirder, but I failed to find a single post on that blog that involved over-imbibing and birding.
So, I will have to take the last refuge of a lazy blogger and report from personal experience. No, I have not birded drunk before. Sure, I have come close, after downing a few margaritas at the beach-side bar before going looking for terns at Cupsogue, or from downing a few delicious rum drinks at Pico Bonito, or after hoisting a few post-work beers before doing some birding on my way home, but I can’t recall birding while actually drunk. Can you?
I don’t think that birding drunk would be terribly easy, to be perfectly honest. Considering how hard it can be to focus one’s eyes when drunk I imagine it would be even more difficult to focus optics. Also, the whole seeing double thing would certainly skew species counts. Now, whether or not birders may or may not partake of other, illegal substances, well, I doubt anyone is going to come out and admit it in the comments…
There are stories of speed-fueled big days floating around out there, stories that come only by word of mouth and are never written down. And, really, what is the caffeine in coffee but a speed-like stimulant? I imagine that birding while high on marijuana might lead to, ahem, interesting experiences, and I don’t even want to know what type of sightings might occur when one birds on a hallucinogen (Man, did you see that fly by? I swear, it was a pterodactyl!). Steroids seem unlikely to give much of an advantage to a birder, unless one is carrying waaaaay too much gear. At high elevations chewing coca leaves is supposed to help with elevation sickness – have any birders out there tried coca leaves?
But to get back to booze and birds. If you have drank to drunkenness while birding, what did you drink? Was it fun? Was it difficult? Do you have a horror story? Would you recommend that other birders try it?
Finally, I would like to point out that many birders use cars to get to and from birding locations and want to make sure that no one thinks it would be cool to bird drunk and then drive. That’s a good way to end up as road kill, which, while it might get your body a good look at a vulture, is not something we want to see happen to any of our 10,000 Birds readers!
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This post was originally published on 16 March 2010, but we hate to keep posts this good buried in the archives!
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Of course I have been birding while I’ve been drunk. The logic is easy:
Whenever I am not asleep, I am birding.
I have been drunk while not being asleep.
The only time I can actively recall birding “under the influence” was at the famous Windhoek backpacker’s “The Cardboard Box”.
I hung out there a few days every few weeks to avoid getting paranoia from hiking through the African bush for days without meeting a single human soul.
They have a very nice pool area outside in the courtyard right next to the bar where beers and gin toxics …er… tonics would flow freely (but sadly not for free), and some of it would freely flow into me during the sunny afternoons while little swifts, weavers and mousebirds would either circle above or hop through the trees and cricket (the game) was on TV.
Did I mention those were good times?
However, REAL birding out in the field while drunk is something I have never done and would consider rather pointless. The drinking doesn’t help the birding and the birding doesn’t help the drinking.
I love to have a pina colada while I bird from my back porch. In fact, we have happy hour there in the summer – the birds feast on our feeders and I don’t even have to drive home after I finish my colada!
Except for champagne toasts at weddings, I’m pretty much a teetotaler. My problem is birdwatching while driving. You know, trying to identify the hawk sitting on the streetlight or watching that heron just a bit too long as you zip by a brief river scene at 65mph. Or maybe slamming on the breaks for a wild turkey or roadrunner. I’ve even been know to pull out the binoculars while stopped at a red light and be brought back to reality by the honking (not by a goose) behind me. I wonder how many people have car accidents due to bird watching while driving?
I’ve never done it myself, but I have heard some of those word-of-mouth stories here in NJ. A lot of the “old timers” in my birding club tell some great stories that usually involves CBCs, big days, etc. where there was much drinking involved before, during, and after the birding. This was in the 1960s-80s. A friend of mine closer to my age always tells me a story about birding with them when he was about 14 or 15 and one of the guys passing a bottle of whisky back to him in the car. I’m not saying it’s responsible at all, but it makes a fun story.
There was the Virginia Rail incident, of course.
Also the latter part of the day documented here, but that was more like mildly buzzed birding.
Drunk? no
Hungover? Yes
Certainly some incidents in my younger days, when partying to 2AM and up at 5.30 to bird…
I did have some Swedish clients who were drinking beer the entire trip from about 9 AM to late night and still managed to get all the birds.
I have no direct experience, but I hear the Finns are even worse!
Koskenkorva birding!!
That’s why they made up the “Big Sit”. You Sit, You bird, You Drink.
But Corey, I would love to see you filling out the visitors book at Jamaica Bay in May after birding on hallucinogens. (Although I have to wonder how many people already do that, for if you read the visitors logs a Jamaica Bay there is some crazy stuff)
All the birders here in Austin are stoned.
My mother and I have a long-standing ritual where we sit in a lovely place at the end of a long day with binocs in one hand and a glass of wine (or two or three in succession) in the other. We refer to this little tradition as “moa watching”.
My excellent yard list owes a lot to alcohol. Almost every night I sit out in the back yard and knock back a few until it gets dark.
It’s why God gave us two hands: one hand for the bins, the other for the beers.
I’ve never been “drunk” while out & about birding but I have been known to carry a “hot toddy” on crisp mornings. Sitting on the porch knocking back a few with binocs in hand can also be rewarding passtime 🙂
Drunk birding: not a problem.
The thing to watch out for is drunk WRITING about birding.
Best,
Mike
While birding? No.
But after the birding, well, that’s a different story. The more birders the merrier.
Back in the day when eagles were a rarity, a group of us used to toast every one we’d seen that day. We gave up that practice once the numbers started edging above 7 per day with any regularity. Now, with 30-50 eagles possible in a decent day of hawkwatching, let me just say that back then I couldn’t even have imagined that.
One of the outdoor bars on the campus of Univ of Sydney has a Kookaburra which sometimes perches on the second-floor railing, unfazed, during afternoon drinking hours. It’s really something holding a cold pint 4 feet from a perched kingfisher.
Done and done. Multiple times.
You see a certain school you’re familiar with happens to have a Nature Preserve out back (see, no driving necessary). Getting up early is rare enough for me that after a long night of drinking (one that leads into what would no longer be defined as “night”), it’s a lot more tempting to just go bird, since I have no idea when the next time I’ll be up at dawn is.
And yes. It is indeed substantially more difficult than birding sober, mostly because of the slowed reflexes. I believe my best drunk bird was an American Bittern though, which certainly came as a surprise.
Hi Corey… oh yes, I’ve been drunk and been birding. If you search my blog you should find a report of the time back in October 1999 when Skev and I were extremely pissed on St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly and twitched over to Tresco by boat to see a Yellow-billed Cuckoo… or maybe two. We had to go back the next day nursing hangovers just to be sure. I also left a beer that same year on St Agnes… well, I downed it quickly at the Turk’s Head before rushing off for a White’s Thrush.
I don’t drink and drive but on Scilly there’s always time for a beer, especially when Proper Job is on in The Atlantic Pub.
Actually, Birds and Beers has gone birding. We do a Woodcock Tailgate Party every April and we were once approached by Coon Rapids Dam who enthusiastically told us: “We totally allow beer in our parks, please come!”
Well we’re going to try to combine birds, bikes & beer this summer. Three of my favorite things. As far as speed goes, there’s a group big day here this May where you’re asked to be there at three in the f’ing morning and keep birding till 8 pm. The ONLY way I could do that is with a pocket full of reds and a cooler full of red bull.
Wait. People bird sober?
@ Duncan…must be a “northern hemisphere” phenomenon!! 🙂
I don’t drink at all, but while birding I have been known to stagger, slur my speech, drive erratically, become easily irritated, and been inclined to vomit. Might as well be plowed.
I would need to be if you ever want to take me birdin’ (or squirrelin’).
You ought to try drinking and bird rehabbing. Nice off-night, no critical care birds, you’re drunk and jolly, and suddenly there’s a knock on the door. Standing outside is someone holding a box, and inside is a bird in a state of serious disrepair. Uh-oh.