First bit of advice - wait & watch for the price to go down before you purchase. The goal of the author is to see 500 birds in Britain & Ireland before he turns 30 and this book highlights some of his more intersting adventures. The world of twitching in Britian is definitely different from the world of birding in the U.S!! The amounts of time spent driving (often 15 or more hours 1 way and then if another bird is spotted some where else, head off for another 10-15 hours travel for THAT bird!), arranging transport via helicopters, ferries, boats (small & large) in what always seem to be gale force winds, rental cars, walking are amazing as is the monetary expenditures of those happy to see a bird for 5 minutes so that they might tick it on their lists. The Brits have a well established bird alert system and think nothing of making hasty arrangements to travel to a sparsely populated island to see a bird a person may have seen many times in Europe, but need or want to tick for the Britain/Ireland list. The author often slept in a car with his birding companions, had to be rescued by the Coast Guard off of a boat with a broken motor, was injured several times, broke a tripod, paid copious amounts of traffic fines and while he didn't elaborate on it, apparently almost lost his home because of his desire to tick a bird.
Not a terribly interesting read, but worth it for the insight in the the world of twitchers.
