Are you a birdwatcher? Has this ever happened to you…?
You are out birdwatching and you say to your companion something like ‘I’m surprised we haven’t seen an X by now’ and almost immediately an X sings, calls or flies past.
It even happens to me when I’m alone – I only have to think those words and it happens.
It happened to me last week on my BBS square. As I walked along that nice laid hedge I thought to myself ‘No Yellowhammers yet, there ought to be Yellowhammers’ and the next bird I saw was a Yellowhammer. Spooky or what?!
Is it just me? If so, that’s even spookier.
I think there are two leading potential explanations. The first is important but dull – a form of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when we remember better the things that confirm our beliefs than the things that contradict them. It could just be that when this thing happens it so sticks in the mind that it overshadows all the dull times when it doesn’t happen. It’s quite likely to be the case.
I wonder though whether there might be something else going on. What if I had subconsciously heard (or even seen) a Yellowhammer, but not realised it consciously? Was that idle thought, soon to be confirmed, the way my complex brain tells me that there is a Yellowhammer around if only I paid attention?
What do you think?
I can tell you something though. Thinking ‘It’s about time that a trip of Dotterel were running around in that field’ never works. It only seems to work with common birds. That’s a shame really.
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It certainly happens to me quite regularly when out birding with my husband! One of us will say something like “I’m surprised we haven’t seen a whitethroat yet” and it’s the next bird we see. Of course then one of us will look up hopefully and say “We haven’t seen an osprey today…..” but it never works! I think both your theories are likely to be correct Mark, both subconscious nudging and confirmation bias, our brains work in mysterious ways – but it always feels spooky!
In the 60’s I was just stepping out of the door of Portland Bill Observatory when one of my companions said “I reckon it’s a good day for a Honey Buzzard” (then far less often reported on passage than now), we looked up and, to our astonishment, a Honey Buzzard flew over low right on cue. Hours later at the same spot, returning from a fruitless search for migrants, we asked out an intuitive friend to make another prediction. “Oh,” he said “I think we’re due an Osprey” (also then less common than today) and, yes, when we all looked up, there was one flying over.
I’d go for the subconscious sighting/hearing. Yesterday I found myself thinking of curlew in very unlikely habitat then realised I had heard a little grebe.
I find it only “works” once. When you have had that “I wonder if . . . oh, there it is!” moment and recognise it as such, you can’t then wish it and make it happen a second time, even for common birds. That doesn’t get any nearer to deciding which of your two explanations is closer to the truth, but it perhaps takes some of the spookiness out of it. If once is a rare coincidence, but one we enjoy and so remember, then twice would be so much rarer, rather than the start of a pattern.
Just saying that piece of habitat looks good for X, I’ve known it happen with really quite rare birds like Citrine Wagtail, Booted Warbler, inland Shorelark, the amount of time it happens is incredible.
The most “spooky” occasion we were having a friendly best best find of day competition, I was winning, friend says never mind I’m going to find Monty’s after these bushes, came out of bushes Monty’s flying south, nowhere near breeding sites.
Doesn’t work in certain upland areas! But perhaps other man made influences at work!
I frequently experience a variant of this phenomenon – names or places that are encountered apparently at random but which then resurface on the news media within a couple of days. One day, I may actually have a reason to go to Godalming.
Filbert – I drove past Godalming this morning. I didn’t stop. But I had breakfast in Midhurst which was nice.
Weirdness happens
http://www.fitzcanes.com/
Serves local gourmet ice creams. Try this cafe on the way back. There are even one, possibly two, sparrows about — especially if you start thinking about them.
I’d go for the subconscious theory. It happened to me twice on Sunday with a Curlew & Cuckoo. I recently spent 3 days Raptor monitoring in the Peak District for the National Trust and thought about watching a Hen Harrier food pass or a skydance. Guess what?
I understand that Amanda Anderson says ‘I haven’t seen a raptor for 10 minutes’ then she looks out of her window and she can see thousands of them.
Last month it happened with a rare bird where i live, an Osprey.
Last year it was my first Green Hair-streak of the year.
It happens fairly regularly.
I have an even weirder one but would be considered mad so ….
We should really also be asking ‘Have you never had this experience?’
Isn’t this exactly what you would expect? And isn’t this exactly how superstitious beliefs develop?
Farmer looks at sky, sees cloud building up, whistles a tune. Two hours later, it rains. “If you whistle when there are clouds in the west, you will bring rain!” he exclaims.
So with bird watching – you are in a good habitat where there is a 75% chance of seeing X. If X pops up early on, you may think nothing of it.
But if X doesn’t pop up by the time you are – say – halfway round, your brain alerts you to the oddness of the fact that the expected event has not occurred. The thought comes to mind, “I should have seen X by now”.
It is still likely that you will see X, but if X now appears, our pattern-seeking facility springs into action – “If you think about seeing a bird, it will appear!” The fact that it “only works for common birds” illustrates that it’s the result of probability not your powers of mystic prophecy.
This is a bit like the Surprise Test Before the End of Term paradox. The longer the Surprise Test does not happen the more likely it is to happen so the less of a surprise it will be. Unless the Evil Teacher decides not to hold it at all but doesn’t tell anyone, so as not to spoil their surprise at not being tested.
‘Two hours later, it rains’
Yes, except all my experiences have been immediate, i.e. within 5 seconds.
Maybe quantum physics will have an explanation one day.
Of course i still think it could also be co-incidence but i have an example which must be more than a billion to one.
Of course there may be a billion people who have never had such a ‘co-incidence’.
The other odd thing is that it seems to happen more when we are in heightened states.
It almost becomes a distraction in some therapy groups i have attended or so normal it was just taken for granted.
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I did this with booted eagle (no less!) south west of Paris last Saturday. A very nice pale phase bird!
I remember walking off the Cover to Calais ferry as it docked in France thinking about the bird species which breed right up to the shores of the English Channel, but rarely visit, far less breed on our island – then the first thing I saw was a stunning crested lark.
Crested Larks seem to like harbour towns. Esbjerg used to be a good spot to see them.
A couple of years ago I was working in the woods with a friend and we were both saying that it would be great to see waxwings (neither of us had seen them before and none had been recorded at the site for many years)
Less than 20 minutes later a flock of them started feeding in the trees around us. I have often thought about how this could have happened and I favour the subconscious explanation.
So let’s set a date and time and all of us should think very hard “Wouldn’t this be a lovely time to ban driven grouse shooting?” and see what happens.
On a similar note I sort of predicted the 1998 Wilson’s Snipe on Scilly. When the bird was first found by those I was sharing accommodation with there was a shortage of information available to confirm the ID. By chance I had happened to have taken along to read an old copy of BB containing a paper separating Wilson’s from Common. I was given a list of other papers to take in following years, but with no effect.