Road bird bingo: the extended cut

by Charlie Peverett in Your car on 18.07.08

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been working on putting together easy-to-use games that kids (and the rest of us) can play in the car on long journeys. We’re pretty pleased with the results.

For some, pub cricket is the game. As a fan of both pubs and cricket, I can see the appeal, really I can.

But for me, it’s the wildlife along the way that makes longer journeys bearable.

Our simple take on animal bingo (opens pdf document) is one way to tap into the nature (and, for the sake of younger players, the farm animals) on display through the car window. But for older children and adults, it can become a game of epic proportions.

The car bird list

Birdwatchers (like cricketers) love to keep lists. All birders will have a ‘life list’ - a list of all the species they’ve ever seen. Many will keep a tally of they’ve seen in the the country they live in, in their home county, or at a favoured spot. Some even keep list of birds they’ve seen on the TV, and, presumably, there are now those who list birds they’ve seen via live webcams on the internet (no, not *those* kind of live webcams; ones like this or this).

A variation that’s also suitable for non-obsessives is the car bird list. Self-explanatory really. Keep a field guide in the glove compartment along with a notebook, and see how much you can see. Though to be clear, peering up at the sky while in transit is best left to the passengers.

Any old journey will get the list started. But once you’ve seen magpie and woodpigeon and starling, spotting the less obvious road birds - the heron, or the lapwing, or the lesser black-backed gull - can become an intriguing challenge.

And if you get into it, regional and seasonal variations start to come into play. A visit to another corner of the UK, at a certain time of year, might allow you to add some impressive ‘car ticks’.

Travelling along the west coast of Scotland gives you a reasonable chance of a golden or white-tailed eagle, while a journey though mid-Wales (or along the M40 in wildest Buckinghamshire) may reveal a red kite or six.

A drive across the north Norfolk coast in winter could find a flock of thousands of pink-footed geese darkening the sky.

And any trip along the south coast of England is likely to pass at least one snowy-white little egret - it’s just a question of keeping an eye on the muddy edges of the rivers and creeks.

And counting little egrets beats counting Little Chefs, anyday.

IMAGE by Flickr user foxypar4