For most naturalists, autumn is a time to gently slow down; to rest, reflect and prepare for winter; to embrace a sense of mellow fruitfulness, by easing into life in the slow lane. Not in my experience. Hardcore birders see it differently. For us, autumn is the time to ramp it up. As the weather intensifies and Atlantic depressions batter the country, so birding ambitions heighten. Our willingness to travel vast distances increases, driven by a determination to see lost or migrant birds that seek shelter and sustenance on our shores.

Everything seems possible for the birder at this time of year. Nature, in all its mystery and diversity, can be neatly categorised, reduced down to a tick on a list. Speed of reaction and planning is key. Watch the weather charts mid-week like a hawk. Fill the car with petrol Friday evening, ready to rush to Aberdeen in time for dawn on a Saturday and on to Felixstowe by Sunday, all the while glorying in the deeply unsustainable and collectively selfish behaviour serviced by our burning need to connect with birds.

All across Britain’s wild Atlantic edge, birders converge on lonely islands set in churning seas, on clustered archipelagos and notable promontories, be they spits, points or headlands. These places are indelibly carved into the psyche of the modern British birder. The birding geography and topography of autumnal Britain is a mix of venerable tradition, pioneering discovery, eternal hope – and catastrophic folly if you are trapped in the wrong place, personal agony setting in, knowing the rarities are elsewhere. These coastal landforms speak to us of past triumphs, drives through the night with expectations riding high, of camaraderie and a shared fellowship as another bird tumbles onto a cherished life list.

We gather but twice a year, this national ornithological tribe: first, rather tamely at the thronged British Birdwatching Fair in August at Rutland Water, mainly to swap stories and buy paraphernalia; again in the autumn, in a more disparate, loose but more purposeful way, smaller gangs out a-hunting rarities from Shetland to Scilly, captivated by the spectacle of migration.

The Isles of Scilly still offer a magical autumn birding season, where east meets west in a heady mix of species vagrancy from the USA to Siberia, attracting 450 or so birders from late September through to early November each year. That crowd is small compared with the invading army we once were back in the mid-1980s (1,500 visiting birders on islands with a resident population of just 2,200). By the hallowed month of October 1999, remembered fondly as almost birding perfection, numbers were down to 900.

We’re still there, extending the tourism season by an extra month, bringing welcome income and endless bird news chatter from island to island on our handheld radios, but we no longer carry as much economic clout. For a host of reasons ranging from Scilly-fatigue, cost of travel and accommodation, prevailing weather systems, a slavish nervous fixation with the autumnal position of the jet stream, information technology and cheaper foreign birding trips, the meteoric rise of Shetland (yes, all of it, not just mythical Fair Isle!) over the past decade has put nails in the coffin of the much-loved Scilly season. Now, more than 500 visiting birders spread themselves thinly across that northern Viking landscape, bringing ornithological expertise, a crusading spirit and the tourist pound. Shetland lacks the intimacy and warmth of Scilly, but it offers exciting frontier birding in places. Birdforum (our gossip hub with over 147,000 members and 3.3 million posts) now runs an annual autumn Scilly-versus-Shetland competition for birders online in which each rare bird is ascribed a ‘rarity value’ based on previous occurrences. The battle lines are drawn in late September. Competition is fierce, often scornful or resentful.

Meanwhile, out east, the North Sea-fronting coastline of Britain from the Northern Isles to Dungeness is littered at weekends with folk kicking Suaeda bushes along Blakeney Point; thrashing about in dunes at Spurn; assiduously working stone walls on Fair Isle; extricating waifs from Heligoland traps; or gazing longingly into Shetland geos looking for a brief flash of movement to bring cheer to an overcast autumn day – perhaps even bestow some degree of ornithological immortality on the finder.

For an entire season your personal geographical and social (or anti-social) life is governed by the vibrations and beeps of a Rare Bird Alert (RBA) pager attached to your belt like some sort of life-affirming pacemaker. At times it even seems to be in tune with the beating of your heart. RBA send out nearly 110,000 messages annually to subscribers about scarce and rare birds. Some days in the autumn, if the weather is right for epic falls of migrants, 750 messages are sent out: a dizzying one message every minute and a half. That’s frantic. The keyboard is on fire. The pager has a ‘mega’ override programmed in so that I can be summoned insistently at all times of the day. It urges me to drop everything, to get in the car and go. It once went off at a conference in September. I delivered my paper, at speed, and dashed off, at greater speed, to Flamborough Head. I missed the lunch, but I did see the brown shrike.

Autumn can make or break the birder. Reputations are won and lost, often in a serendipitous instance. It can be stressful in the extreme. This is raw, exhausting, elemental, and grim at times. It is riddled with jealousy, intrigue and competitiveness. Hard-won local patches close to the sea are defended like a fortress. Sharing at times seems unthinkable. Autumn is also a brutal time for lost young birds driven onwards by their inbuilt migratory instinct. If that misfires, they may end up in the drink.

I used to think that there was a certain rhythm to all this, but there isn’t. Autumn is the most unpredictable and tumultuous of times, for birders and the birds; truly life in the fast lane. It is all order and chaos. But then, so is nature.

Dr Rob Lambert, 2016