Big year - A big year is a personal quest among birders to identify as many species as possible by sight or sound, within a single calendar year and within a specific geographic area. It is the supreme birding experience, the stuff of birding legend and a thing of dreams and nightmares, optimism and despair.

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Twitcher   – General explanation: A slightly derogative term to describe a highly obsessed individual who will go to great lengths to identify new bird species and add them to a list. This activity can extremely competitive; the aim being to have the longest list and to have seen the rarest bird.

                 – My explanation: A “Twitcher” is a highly idolised term used by those birders who can’t count, to describe those who can.

                 – A Birdwatcher’s explanation: Twitchers are highly stressed, nervous individuals. The very mention of some exotic avian delight…sends                              them into paroxisms. They literally twitch; hence "twitchers". - Terence Hollingworth, Blagnac France

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Birdwatchers, Birders and Twitchers - Crudely put, bird-watchers look at birds; birders look for them, and twitchers tick the birds that birders have found. Any serious birdwatcher will take great exception to being called a twitcher. Any serious twitcher will gracefully forgive someone for being incorrectly called a birdwatcher.

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Tick – Not the unwanted small creepy-crawlies that bite you while twitching in the bush. A tick is a species new to any of the various lists you might keep.

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Mega / Megatick -  A tick of an extremely rare or hard to find bird.

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CMF (for "cosmic mind-f****r") – The sighting of a CMF may leave you scarred for life. It is a megatick which leaves you emotionally crippled by its beauty/size/whatever as well as its extreme rarity.  Warning: CMF is terminology only used by disreputable twitchers, and frowned upon in the tweed and straw hat birding community.

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Lifer – A bird you see for the first time in your life and a tick for your life list.

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Lists – Lists are as diversified as the birders who compile them. Most birders have life lists, garden lists, regional lists and country lists. There is a rumour of a twitcher with a “ birds seen from underwater” list.

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LBJ - a Little Brown Job. Terminology usually used by twitchers while they wait for birdwatchers to identify the bird. An amazing number of birds are small and brown and a challenge to ID. Twitchers graciously allow birdwatchers time to go through the mundane task of identifying these birds.

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BOP - Bird of Prey/Raptors. Although many BOPs are big and impressive, their numerous variations often make them difficult to identify, so this generic acronym can come in handy.

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Bogey – We all have our bogey birds – those birds which constantly elude you. My bogey bird is a Rufous-breasted Sparrowhawk. You spend days and days searching for it, to no avail. When you mention your pursuit to other birders, they stare at you with surprise and pity, “because it is such an easy bird to find”. Easy my foot – show me a Rufous-breasted Sparrowhawk and I will have a CMF!

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Trash bird – Ironically, a bogey bird very often becomes your next trash bird. After you have searched for months on end for this rare and elusive species, and experienced a mind-blowing CMF when finding it, you now fall over these birds around every corner. (Trash birds are either spiteful, or have a sense of humour.)  

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Binos/Bins – Those barrel-like objects around a birder’s neck that makes their eyes go bigger and better. Also called binoculars by the uninitiated.

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Birding scopes – A birding scope (or telescope) is a relatively compact, single-barrel optical instrument that gains weight the further you move from your vehicle. It requires a tripod to hold it steady and a willing birder to carry it in the field.

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Dude - a comfort-loving birder who prefers serene surroundings and nice weather to wading through swampy mud looking for a flufftail. Dudes prefer birding from vehicles and are usually satisfied with quite common birds that would drive a twitcher insane with boredom. Dudes are always good for a cup of coffee for a thirsty twitcher.

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Stringy/Stringer - suspect identification. A claimed rarity that turns out to be very iffy and suspicious; with no collaborating evidence such as photos or sightings by other birders. A stringer is a birder who ticks birds only seen in his/her imagination.

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Dip – Not to find your target bird; to miss out on a bird everyone else have seen.

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Spish – Not the sound a birder makes trying to get rid of the morning coffee, although it can sound quite similar. Spish is rather the sound a desperate birder makes to mimic a bird in distress in order to attract other birds.

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Morning chorus / Dawn chorus – Not the sound a group of birders make in a concerted effort to get rid of the pre-dawn coffee. It is the magical chorus of bird songs and calls that occurs at the start of a new day.

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Pelagic – Going out to sea, usually in a very small boat, to find birds in between your bouts of sea sickness.

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Field guide – A book that informs you of all the wonderful birds you are dipping.

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Splits & lumps – This is the bane of a twitcher’s list, but it can either work in you favour or against you. A split is when a species is divided into two new distinct species. Twitchers love splits, especially if the former sub-species has already been ticked. A lump is when the birding gods decide that two perfectly distinct species, because of some mumbo-jumbo, now suddenly needs to be combined into one species. This will certainly ruin a perfect birding day.

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Birders are most welcome to add to Birding Terms for Dummies in the comments area of my blog. All inputs will be highly appreciated!