"Daddy, I'm scared!" Which takes priority - twitching a rare bird or the safety of your four-year-old daughter?

BIRDER Lucy McRobert has sparked a double controversy with her report on a twitching quest to catch a glimpse of the rare Blackburnian warbler that turned up in The Scillies in October last year.

In her article for the BirdGuides website, she reveals that her husband (a university academic) "tossed" their four-year-old-daughter into a dinghy headed for the island where the vagrant had been identified.

Describing the bird's occurrence as "mind-bendingly cataclysmic", she writes: "Seriously low tides meant that we couldn't land on the quay until 3.30 pm.

"Five minutes of enforced concentration, before: 'Argh! The child!'

 

An apologetic call to nursery followed by another to the husband: "Get the child, NOW. I'll meet you on the quay."

 It is what comes next that is troubling.

                                          

Lucy McRobert - controversial or what!

"A beach landing involves jumping from a tripper boat into an inflatable dinghy, a few feet below, which then runs you ashore. Think Normandy, with less explosions. 

"This is not something you want to do under pressure with a small child. 

"'Daddy, I'm scared,' was heard by at least three witnesses as he tossed her to a birder below. 

"She then clung to his neck the whole way to the beach and had to be peeled off."

Was it worth it? The tot came to no harm, and the "glorious sunflower of a bird" duly out popped from a bush.

In response to the article, most birders seem to have been impressed, with one describing it as "one of the most exhilarating wildlife articles" he had ever read

No one has since queried her husband's sense of parental responsibility.

However, one has  taken umbrage at Ms McRobert's comparison of the twitchers' dinghy landing to what happened on D-Day, June 6, 1944. He describes it as "a shocking thing to say".

This comment, though, has received short shrift from other birders, one telling him to "get a life" and another commending Ms McRobert, claiming  there is "too much wokeness in the world and not enough humour". 

The Wryneck says: It is easy to understand how the author got caught up in the thrill of the chase, but is there not something disquieting about her account? A hollow adrenaline rush - is that really what birding is about? It is fortunate that her daughter came to no harm. Supposing she had been injured or worse - all for the sake of her parents' frenzied glimpse of a rare bird. How then would she, her husband and fellow-twitchers have felt? As for the reference to "Normandy with less explosions", this is insensitive. Has McRoberts never attended a Remembrance Day ceremony? Has she never bowed her head in solemn reflection of the horrors of  warfare. The D-Day landings were not  a creation of the film industry to showcase celebrity actors and generate box office revenue. Real people were involved, and their terror and suffering could scarcely have been more terrible.

* The full BirdGuides article can be read at: Lucy McRobert: bird of a lifetime - BirdGuides