Bad Seawatching No1

WhitbyBirding seeks to improve your seawatching skills and knowledge. The world of the skilled seawatcher is a world of mystery and suspense. Hours of intense concentration rewarded with that 35 seconds of joy and excitement – ecstasy even. The world of the bad seawatcher is one of cold, wet misery, spilt tea and peeing all over your bins. The Bad Seawatching series is intended to help you avoid some of the seawatching beginners less comfortable mistakes. This series should transform the seawatching expeience for every birder that follows our expert advice.

The photograph (kindly supplied by Ed van zoonen) illustrates a number of elements of bad seawatching. (It should be pointed out at this stage that the three gentlemen in the photo may not intentionally be engaging in seawatching – but they could be, and if they are it is very bad seawatching indeed.)

Look carefully at the photograph. I will pick out a few issues for you:

1 Fire too small

2 Tripod in wrong place

3 Poor posture

Later in the series we will look at each of these elements in detail as well as examining crucial aspects like:

Wrong place

No notebook

Is it a bird?

Too much imagination

No soup

In the meantime can you find the 5 other elements of Bad Seawatching illustrated in Ed’s photo? You are welcome to post these in the comments section below. WhitbyBirding may even come up with a prize for the most accurate answers, well, maybe.