Twitching by numbers: A birder's account of his hectic life as he chases rare species across Britain and Ireland

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Any author who deviates from what is considered decorous and appropriate enjoys no licence - he (or she) risks being singled out and pilloried with opprobrium. Credit also to the author for having enough self-belief to produce, finance and market the finished project purely on his own initiative and thus minus the faffing about with agents and publishers. If you ever wanted to understand what twitching is, then this detailed account would be a good place to start. Innuendo and/or explicit images were also a mainstay of the Carry On and Confessions of movies that were popular in the 1980s and before.

And don't forget the output of TV comedians Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd, not to mention the photographs that have long appeared on Page 3 and elsewhere in many a red-top tabloid newspaper? I didn't see a copy to read, no idea if any other "unknowns" did, but I do know that he paid a considerable sum to someone who "edited it".Perhaps he ought to publish two editions - the revised sanitised version and the original, the latter to contain a warning on the cover that some of its content may cause offence to certain readers. Henry Fox-Talbot got so peeved by twitchers peering into his garden that he invented photography so that they could have books full of birdy photographs which would obviate this antisocial behaviour but it didn’t work very well and although there are squillions of such books the uninvited peering still goes on and these days with the added nuisance of throwing empty shandy cans into the aforementioned garden so the dog can mince them into small sharp shards. Insert joke about tits here, but seriously this is why women still feel so unwelcome in the birding community. Encountering rare birds is amazing, I’ll never forget coming across a grounded little auk in a public park and if I ever look out at my mum’s bird table and see a rose coloured starling I’d probably be at serious risk of cardiac arrest from excitement.

The book is illustrated by the author and, although infinitely better than I could do myself, the illustrations are all quite good, but not tip top. Just before Christmas, Garry Bagnell published Twitching by numbers: Twenty-four years of chasing rare birds around Britain and Ireland. What further marks out his book as special is that the illustrations are all by Garry himself - not photographs but exquisite colour artwork which beautifully captures the spirit as well as the plumage of such species as varied thrush, indigo bunting, American redstart, common nighthawk and song sparrow.You would have been at the top of the list in 1987, aside Ron Johns, if you had seen a paltry (I jest! Twitching is a lifetime marathon and as the author points out you’ll have to spend a good four decades at it, and fairly obsessively at it, to stand any chance of a top 10 ranking.

He just sought to put down in words and pictures some of the highlights of almost quarter of a century of twitching, these accompanied by reflections on other aspects of his career and outlook on life. How refreshing, therefore, to come across Twitching By Numbers - a birder's account of his hectic life as he chases rare species across Britain and Ireland. There were some reserves of course that were open every day such as the RSPB’s headquarters The Lodge Reserve but closed around 5. That takes a lot of bottle, but he has been rewarded with the satisfaction of standing, unsupported, on his own two feet.Following Ms McRobert's influential intervention, many others have entered the fray - most to support her viewpoint but others to counter-attack on behalf of Mr Bagnell who has mounted his own spirited self-defence. I’m still bemused that the author felt compelled to water down/ delete certain sections just because a single magazine columnist condemned the book having identified what she deemed to be ‘sexism’. While you all might take the piss (fair enough) I have got quite a bit of experience of writing and publishing books, one of which was about birdwatching, as I am sure you know. And who cares that Garry Bagnell has seen 553 bird species in Britain and Ireland (which puts him way behind Steve Gantlett on an estimated 590 species)? This one can’t be blamed on twitchers, but there have also been cases where high profile birds have been shot – a red footed falcon in Shropshire and a little bustard in Norfolk – the latter was found on a road verge where it was highly visible.

However, racing round the country to spot a rare bird is pushing it a bit not just for resource use/carbon emission reasons. No doubt some twitchers who started birdwatching long after me will have seen more different birds than myself and of course I’ve noticed the boasting by some and it’s not just me that’s noticed. I've just spent the last year writing a book about the last 24 years of twitching birds in Britain and Ireland. The human fallout and carnage from this reverence for the supposed personal freedom brought by a car (often to sit in a traffic jam with all the others enjoying their ‘freedom’ of the road) is horrendous and really deserves to be brought up alongside the environmental cost. The one where pictures of raptors in flight away from the camera in the near dark at the edges of tracks and forests allows their identification from memory of a two-second sighting when you weren’t expecting it so you didn’t have a pair of night-vision binoculars handy.I am pleased that Garry has temporarily withdrawn the book and has committed to re-writing at least the first four chapters. Somehow in that quarter-of-a-century, he has managed to catch up with more than 550 bird species in Britain and Ireland while simultaneously holding down a happy family life, a full-time job in finance with a series of bluechip employers plus a range of sporting interests including playing chess (to county standard) and darts, not to mention following the fortunes of Arsenal FC. Permits where needed for lots of RSPB reserves of which where only open a few days a week and not all year and even those RSPB reserves that didn't need advance permits, some of thos RSPB reserves onluy open a few days a week. All the same twitching is a far less damaging way to be obsessive about birds than standing in a butt and try to shoot as many as possible that have been driven towards you by a bored teenager looking for beer money. Not deeply, but I am certainly interested in this book because it is a very clear description of the fieldsport of twitching from the viewpoint of a keen exponent.