"I was stained with a stigma that would take me the rest of school to shake for this was Homophobe High, where any dif…"

"Birding gave me the excuse to get out into the bush, to lose my self in the wider world of nature, detox my mind of e…"

"Actually, I think that is part of the appeal of birdwatching for me – you come away from an encounter with a bird wit…"

"Cool people don’t bother becoming dictators; they’re too busy getting laid."

"The Twitcher’s list is very democratic. Each bird counts as one tick. There are no extra points for beauty or rarity."

"None of the locals I met could understand why I hadn’t immediately built on the land, the mentality being that if you…"

"When I hear of someone suffering a mental illness that causes them to be ridden with anxiety, socially isolated and p…"

"I could see the same look of incomprehension on her face that my parents often wore: ‘this person cannot possibly be …"

"I remembered why I liked hanging out with the top rate twitchers – they might be freaks but they were awesomely brill…"

"As I settled into the sleeping bag in the back seat of the car, I revelled in the glorious stillness of the country a…"