The Pokémon franchise has turned 30, which means that it’s been a long time since a childhood friend and I braved Pokémon Blue’s haunted Lavender Town together – solemnly handing the Game Boy back and forth in the first (and perhaps last) documented case of two only children sharing something.

For most of my 29 years, I couldn’t have cared less about birdwatching. But as it turns out, this hobby is uniquely suited to those of us who belong to the Pokémon generation.

It started with trying to impress a woman. We were on a date and she gave me homework: go watch a birdwatching documentary called Listers. It was due on our next date.

This was easy for me; I once read an 800-page book because a crush mentioned it precisely once. When I ever-so-casually dropped that I’d read it, my crush revealed she had not. She only knew of it, she explained, because it was her crush’s favourite book. Watching a doco was a comparatively small commitment in the pursuit of love everlasting.

Little did I know that, like a cockatoo on sunflower seeds, I would soon be hooked and screeching for more.

Just like the fictional Pokémon trainer, the birdwatcher finds themself gradually going farther afield in pursuit of........

© The Guardian