How 'green' a birder are YOU?

Some years ago - probably about twenty - I made the decision to stop chasing around the country to add to my UK life list: although I've added perhaps a dozen species since then, these have all been comparatively local. I haven't flown in a passenger jet since 1992 (and that remains my only commercial flight ever!) and whenever I have a trip out birding, it's always in the company of good friends: only very rarely do I go solo. Generally speaking, I don't travel out of county to add a year tick. An example is the Red-footed Falcon in Suffolk: I've seen a dozen of these in the past, so it would seem slightly redundant to drive across the county to see another.

Until Linda and I semi-retired from our space memorabilia and meteorite businesses, we attended around forty events a year, from Exeter in the west to Newcastle in the north. Eventually we managed to transform our business-model to online sales via our website and nowadays only attend two shows a year  - both in East Anglia. Our motivation was, at least in part, trying to reduce our 'carbon footprints'.

If you read the online tweets and blogs of many - if not most - of the better-known UK birders, hardly any of them seem to have considered a similar change in attitude: several claim to have seen over half of the global list, jetting off several times a year to remote locations to add one or two endemics. Others drive a hundred thousand miles a year to maintain their rankings as top ten listers. (I'm not criticising the number one lister: he makes no pretence of being a conservationist and is totally honest about his endeavours!)

In the greater scheme of things, this probably has little or no effect on the partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 or climate change, but it's a little galling to hear some of these individuals pontificating about protecting the environment or how their vegan diet is saving the planet!