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Orchid watching

Bill Oddie doesn't twitch birds - he twitches flowers!

Bill Oddie is often referred to as Britain’s best-known twitcher, but he's not a twitcher. Twitching is the pursuit of rare birds, when people travel from all over the country to one place to look at a bird so they can tick it off on their list. There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s not really his kind of bird-watching. Bill is quite happy pottering round looking at common birds. He likes rare ones, but doesn't go chasing them. So once and for all he does not twitch birds - he twitches flowers. The plus point of twitching flowers is that they don’t fly away! This is a lizard orchid and it’s a new flower for Bill. He can’t say it’s beautiful, but it really is peculiar. These structures give it its name, but they look more like sort of grotesque tadpoles than lizards. It’s supposed to have a very distinctive smell... of billy-goat. Bill is by no means the only one who twitches orchids. The wardens and rangers on a lot of reserves round here get phone calls asking ‘Are the lizards out yet?' or 'Have the ladies gone over?’. Well that’s all orchid talk, and so Bill is going to have a day orchid twitching and he may not be alone. Many of the commoner orchids live right out in the open and are nice and easy too see, like the pyramidal orchid, because it’s shaped like a pyramid, and common spotted. The spots are actually on the leaves. The fragrant orchid is well named. There are woodland specialists as well - butterfly orchid, lady orchid and man orchid. Some orchids have become masters of disguise. The fly orchid looks like a little furry fly on a green leaf. But the best insect impersonator of them all is the bee orchid. Now that really does look like a bee and certainly male bees think so because they come in and they are tempted to mate with it and thus pollinate the flowers. Monkey orchids are much rarer and Bill is delighted to find one.

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