In birding, the difference between a rarity and an everyday species is also relative. What is common in one location can be exceedingly unusual elsewhere. For the bird, this most likely means being lost\u200a\u2014\u200aa wayward soul at the mercy of the wind or weather, exhausted and forced to choose a flightpath beyond its control. A Rose-breasted Grosbeak in Ontario is certainly a pleasure to behold, but displaced to Shetland it might draw in hundreds of camera-toting enthusiasts like the gravity of a superdense star. Alternatively, a rare species could also be an incomer in search of better places to live. The endemic birds of many islands started out this way, when a small population self-introduced and evolved to its locality. Such is the case of the Corsican Nuthatch, a bird found only in the high mountains of its namesake isle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitching is the name for a specific activity that involves travelling to record and -document the presence of a rare bird. To twitch is to enact a human migration in pursuit of avian migrants, and twitchers are like prospectors who descend into locations for little reason other than to extract a finite and precious resource. There are many stories of \u201chardcore\u201d twitchers booking chartered flights, hailing a taxi to an absurd location, taking a picture of some forlorn, exhausted bird, and returning home in a day. This scopophilic birding-at-all-costs phenomenon is nowhere better revealed than on Corvo, the northernmost island of the Azores archipelago. For birders who are fixated on lists and competition, Corvo is the<\/em> autumn hotspot. This island is the nexus of European twitching; it is the place to see and be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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$\"Scott-Rogers\"$
Scott Rogers<\/strong>
Release for Sleepwalkers (Peafowl, Golden Pheasant, Lady Amherst\u2019s Pheasant, Crested Pigeon),<\/em> 2022.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
The reason for Corvo\u2019s particular significance to European bird enthusiasts is its location. Corvo, meaning the Island of the Crow in Portuguese, is situated nearly two thousand kilometres from the continent, making it more or less the westernmost boundary of Europe. Being in the middle of the Atlantic makes this little extinct volcano the most likely place that a beleaguered bird from North America, pulled off course by hurricanes, might land. In recent years, numerous \u201cWP firsts\u201d have been found on the island, meaning the first-ever record of a particular species within the region circumscribed by the Western Palaearctic. The Western Palaearctic is one of eight biogeographic realms covering Earth\u2019s surface; it consists of North Africa, parts of the Middle East, and Europe\/Eurasia up to the Ural Mountains. The \u201cWP,\u201d or \u201cWestern Pal,\u201d is perhaps the most coveted place for competitive birding in the world, and to notch a \u201cWP first\u201d is a crowning achievement within the rarefied world of twitching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Scott-Rogers\"$
Scott Rogers<\/strong>
Release for Sleepwalkers (Peafowl, Golden Pheasant, Lady Amherst\u2019s Pheasant, Crested Pigeon),<\/em> 2022.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Admittedly, I have considered travelling to Corvo. Not for the birds, but for the birding spectacle\u200a\u2014\u200athat time each October when a hundred or so white and wealthy predominantly male eccentrics turn up to look for a Northern Parula or a Prothonotary Warbler. How do the birders engage culturally, socially, and economically with the island? Are these individuals self-
conscious about what they are doing, driven by their unusual fixation to photograph disoriented, wasted creatures? These questions helped me conceive the idea of a Corvo trip as an artistic autoethnography. I thought it would be interesting to document the twitchers and their impacts on the people and place. Would the best mode for this be a documentary film? Or perhaps a photobook? Either way, the project would have to be something that turned the scrutiny of the lens back on the twitchers themselves. But, after some sober second thought, I discarded the idea. What would I learn that could justify the trip? I\u2019m sure there would be plenty of surprises, but when does critical inquiry simply become a repetition of the same questionable behaviour one has journeyed to witness? What would extracting this extractive behaviour for the art system achieve? In the end, it felt like a lot of carbon in the atmosphere, and a rather dubious indulgence on my part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I\u2019ve occasionally taken the train across from Glasgow to Edinburgh to look for a Yellow-browed Warbler, or popped down to my local hotspot when a Black-crowned Night-heron arrived last spring, but I\u2019m not interested in being a twitcher. At least not in a conventional sense. For me, this behaviour lacks scruple and self-awareness. My feeling is that twitchers tend to take more than they give, and have been known to cause the distress or even the death of the birds they pursue. Beyond the birds, twitchers often draw the ire of local people, taxing infrastructure and people\u2019s patience and privacy, and disregarding indigenous access protocols.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I wonder what the inhabitants of Corvo feel when the twitchers show up in autumn each year? Encountering birds like this feels painfully mired in a race to the bottom\u200a\u2014\u200ait is a self-centred tourism born of imperial logic.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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In contrast, my time spent attending to avifauna is a type of active meditation. Although it produces few material artifacts, for me birding is an embodied, somatic activity that instigates an engaged immersion in the environment. I draw this sensibility into the artworks that I make, attending to site, context, and materials in order to create heightened types of awareness. Making artworks is about feeling, processing, and reconfiguring in ways that provide an unfolding, fugitive experience\u200a\u2014\u200asomething that can be only partially conveyed through images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being absorbed by birds also breeds oddly specific desires. With twitchers I think I share this trait\u200a\u2014\u200abirds captivate me, and I often imagine being in their presence. As I cross–reference guidebooks and field guides, I am drawn to species that I\u2019ve never encountered. These birds on paper lodge themselves in the imagination and become talismans of future adventures. Perhaps I will never bear witness to a Resplendent Quetzal or a Night Parrot, but their very existence leads me into the Costa Rican highlands and the desert of Australia. The speculation of searching is already a powerful fantasy. However, I am enamoured with the logistical and cultural parts of these imagined encounters as well. To plan and undertake a complex trip on the pretext of a bird is exciting\u200a\u2014\u200ait precipitates new ways to learn together with others and an expansion of how I come to know the world. These are the same qualities that draw me toward making art. This type of creative tourism is much more than seeing one bird; rather, the bird becomes the locus of an entire panorama of experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Returning to the Corsican Nuthatch (one of my many fantasy birds), switching from speculation to encounter became a question of style. To me style is imbricated with ethics, as it is concerned with how one wishes to be in the world, how one is perceived by others, and how one also perceives one\u2019s own actions. I think about similar questions when making artworks. The visual appearance of a work is certainly important, but how it is produced is just as significant. So conceiving a birding trip as a kind of artwork was an interesting proposition. What would make an encounter with Sitta whiteheadi<\/em> the most rewarding on these terms? What would be the best style of seeing the Corsican Nuthatch?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foremost, I refused air travel. To visit Corsica, I used different modes: trains, boats, my body in motion. Slow travel and slow tourism have now become familiar buzzwords amongst the eco-conscious of the Global North. Regardless of the marketing, birding tourism under these parameters made the most sense to me. From Glasgow I took the train to London, then Paris, passing on to Marseille. In Marseille, I boarded the overnight ferry to Bastia, a thirteen-hour cruise, reaching port with the dawn. I settled in Bastia and researched Le Train Corse<\/em>, finding a route inland to Vivario. This village allows foot access to Bocca di Sorba, an alpine pass where I had noted recent observations of the Corsican Nuthatch through the popular birding app eBird.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"\"$
Scott Rogers<\/strong>
Release for Sleepwalkers (Peafowl, Golden Pheasant, Lady Amherst\u2019s Pheasant, Crested Pigeon),<\/em> 2022.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
The train runs along the coast and through the mountainous middle of the island. Even during the December holidays the route is busy, bustling with all walks of Corsican life. It seemed to me that I was the only tourist aboard. Alighting at Vivario, I walked along a main highway and through the village, reaching a quieter side road that branched again into a 4\u2009\u00d7\u20094 forest track. When the track came to an end I was forced upward through dense vegetation, brambles, and scree\u200a\u2014\u200aa risky bit of bushwhacking given my isolation and lack of experience in this landscape. Certainly, a Corsican would have had a better solution than mine. Nonetheless, the humbling upward grovel eventually led to a chicaning alpine road, taking me to the pass. Bocca di Sorba is incredibly scenic, and the day was bright and cold. I watched as a flock of fifteen Ravens tumbled and croaked through the thermals, playing simply for the sake of it. At the summit, in the early afternoon sun, I walked and listened, waiting to pick out some unusual sonic quality from the soundscape. The pine trees had changed here, and I could tell there was a subtle difference in the ecology at the top of the pass. Suddenly, a harsh rasping interspersed with a gentle peeping emanated from the mature trees. I raised my binoculars and looked. Corsican Nuthatch. Thirty seconds later it was gone, but I was giddy. I lingered in the sun a while, and then made my way back. I took no pictures of the bird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Born in Mohkinstsis Treaty 7\/Calgary, Scott Rogers resides in Glasgow. His work is primarily concerned with relationships among humans, other lifeforms, and land.<\/p>\n\n\n
Scott Rogers, Scott Rogers<\/div>\n
Scott Rogers, Scott Rogers<\/div>
Scott Rogers, Scott Rogers<\/div>
Scott Rogers, Scott Rogers<\/div>
Scott Rogers, Scott Rogers<\/div>
Scott Rogers, Scott Rogers<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a birder and an artist, I find these dual obsessions inextricable, especially when travelling. Before going to install an exhibition, I will research nearby nature reserves\u200a\u2014\u200awelcome escapes from gallery pressures. At\u00a0Venice, documenta, and other international art events, I compile observations on my phone while walking between pavilions, my binoculars placed at the ready in a complimentary tote bag. More than vocations or\u00a0pastimes, art and birds are my ways of navigating the world\u200a\u2014\u200aencounters with my own relativism to other ecologies, economies, politics, people, and land. These\u00a0forms of tourism bring me to places to experience art that\u00a0is unavailable where I live and birds that are not\u00a0found around my home.<\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":250673,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,882],"tags":[],"numeros":[6937],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[6921],"artistes":[6957],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-250690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-post","9":"numeros-111-tourism","10":"auteurs-scott-rogers-en","11":"artistes-scott-rogers-en"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250690"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270820,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250690\/revisions\/270820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250690"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=250690"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=250690"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=250690"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=250690"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=250690"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=250690"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=250690"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=250690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}