Here's a response to the post on twitching from birding-Australia,
and I thought it worth forwarding as well. I'd love to see more
posts such as this on tweeters.

>G'day,
>In regard to Andrew Stafford's observation in his previous
>email "without exception, the birders I've met were drawn to birding
>by the beauty of birds".
>I haven't had the pleasure of Andrew's acquaintance, but apart from
>that I can say that in my case I was drawn to birding by the
>annoyance of one particular species of bird. It started when I was
>being woken up in the morning (in Sydney) by the demented "weir
>- weir - weir - weir" of some mystery bird in our front yard. For a
>bit of a lark, I recorded this ridiculous call as a voicemail
>greeting on my mailbox at work (which I could access from any phone
>to do so). Subsequently a colleague (whose surname happened to be
>"Weir") identified it as the common koel, even though he had little
>general interest in wildlife.
>Mr Weir had an unpleasant mental association from his childhood, of
>this call waking him up early, announcing another dreaded day
>of having to go to his Catholic school. Someone (a parent I guess),
>had told him what the name of the bird was. I had no such
>recollection of this call from my childhood - in St Lucia Brisbane -
>where the main avian bedroom annoyance I had was from the ubiquitous
>peewee call, which I associated instead with hours of dreary
>homework after school.
>Mr Weir's naming of the species had me look it up in a quasi public
>library (i.e. bookshop), so that I might recognize this bird by
>sight (and perhaps hurl a rock at it if I caught it off-guard in the
>garden). This in fact I did the following weekend.
>But the good news is, that the act of so identifying it aroused my
>curiosity to see what other birds were calling around my house. I
>soon discovered another, and when next spending lunchtime at the
>bookshop, identified this other one as a red-whiskered bulbul.
>I found this latter act of identication as rather intellectually
>rewarding, and sometime later I made the plunge and
>impulsively purchased my first wildlife book - Pizzey & Knight's
>field guide, from which the above "weir - weir - weir - weir" call
>description was taken. This reference book sat alongside others in
>my bookcase, which were mainly to do with cars and astronomy.
>Thus set the train in motion, and I've never looked back. The
>personal thrill of discovery and the satisfaction of acquiring the
>observation/identification skills and knowledge is what holds my
>interest. The same now spills over to all wildlife and
>habitat species, and so grows a caring concern for same. Beauty -
>or aesthetic appeal - is appreciated where it exists, but is
>irrelevant to holding my interest. Twitching - in the sense of
>maximising counts of different species on particular forays - I
>therefore think is an admirable pursuit, inasmuch as better counts
>demand greater observation/identification skills and knowledge. For
>example, I remember one Saturday morning last year when I ran into
>Edwin Vella arriving at Pitt Town Bottoms nature reserve (Hawkesbury
>region), just as I left. He later published his sightings on
>birding-aus, and had found roughly twice as many species as I had
>recorded, including some I dearly wished I had seen!
>
>Regards
>Bruce Roubin

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