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Bird charity locked out of Twitter after woodcock tweets

Liz Cutting/BTO Woodcock standing in snowLiz Cutting/BTO
The British Trust for Ornithology said its Twitter problem occurred after it had been repeatedly tweeting about its woodcock survey throughout January

A bird conservation charity said it had been locked out of its Twitter account for eight days after posting several tweets about woodcock.

The Norfolk-based British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) said it lost access to its account during the Big Garden Birdwatch.

"It's all a bit of a mystery," said the BTO's Tom Stewart.

Twitter has yet to respond to a BBC request for comment, but Elon Musk tweeted to say the story was "ironic".

The BTO posted on its Facebook page to inform birdwatchers that its Twitter account had been frozen on 20 January, at a time when BBC Winterwatch was covering the RSPB's annual citizen count of birds.

"We tried to contact Twitter to try to get our account back up and running quickly, but it's all automated and you just get a message back saying 'thank you for sending the information - we will review it'," said Mr Stewart.

The charity, which has its office in Thetford in Norfolk, said it was asked by Twitter to verify its account, but "it was all downhill from there really, as the age we put in didn't tally with Twitter's (very under-publicised) age verification policy", he said.

"We thought it might have happened because of our repeated use of the word 'woodcock' for our species survey, which might have been misinterpreted by Twitter's algorithms," he added.

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Twitter's @TwitterComms account has yet to respond to the BBC's request for an explanation, but the social media website's owner Elon Musk has posted a tweet.

He wrote: "Most ironic thing I've read in a while. How much wood could a woodcock..."

Mr Stewart added: "It was annoying that it happened in that week of all weeks, when there tends to be a swell of activity among our 115,000 followers for Winterwatch and the weekend's RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, which we support and highlights that people can monitor birds all year round in our own Garden Birdwatch."

Sir David Attenborough and Chris Packham
Chris Packham (on the right, pictured with Sir David Attenborough) has been presenting BBC Winterwatch for two weeks from Wild Ken Hill in west Norfolk

BBC Winterwatch presenter Chris Packham tweeted to ask Mr Musk to sort things out after his co-presenter Michaela Strachan had also lost her account.

He called the BTO "well respected scientists and educators working to support critical conservation projects".

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The @_BTO account was restored on Saturday evening.

Mr Stewart said: "Obviously we're relieved to be able to tweet again.

"But we're conscious of the irony of a bird charity being locked out of Twitter."

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Small boy takes part in Big Garden Birdwatch
Wildlife fans are asked to count the numbers of bird species they see in their gardens for an hour for the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch
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