How to become a birder: 10 easy ways to start this life-changing hobby

A kestrel in flight over hay field in Lincolnshire. Photograph: Gavin Bickerton-Jones/Getty Images

I’m assured this is a big deal: on the far side of a field in Thetford, separated from me by a gate, there is a stone-curlew.

Jon Carter, from the British Trust for Ornithology, patiently directs my binoculars up, down and past patches of grass until my gaze lands on an austere-looking, long-legged brown bird. “Quite a rare bird,” Carter says, pleased. “Very much a bird of the Breckland.”