It has often been said that one of the best ways of birdwatching is by bicycle. Certainly I have found this a useful way of covering large areas whilst remaining quiet and connected to the environment and often birding by bicycle can allow one to approach birds more closely than one can on foot.

However, if you live in a hilly or windy area cycling can be more of a chore than a pleasure and there comes a point where increasing the distance one covers shifts the emphasis from birdwatching to hard-core cycling. These issues came to mind when I was alerted to a website which sells do-it-yourself kits to turn a standard bicycle into a motorized bicycle: http://www.bicycle-engines.com - “Turn your ordinary bicyle into a motorized gas scooter today with a complete ready to install bicycle motor kit that includes all the necessary mounting hardware needed to attach it directly to your bike.”

Motorized bicycles are something my father used to talk about when I was younger so I was interested in reading about these kits. I would imagine that these engines make a certain amount of noise but what I was interested in is that with one of these kits it would be possible to visit a number of birdwatching sites in one day by using the engine between them and turning it off to cycle around more quietly once the site has been reached. I could certainly have used one of these outfits when I was doing the fieldwork for my degree dissertation, covering huge distances on foot – what a relief it would have been to have been able to hop on one of these.

Birdwatching aside, where these motorized bicycles would really come into their own is as an alternative, cheap and fairly efficient means of transport. With a lack of a decent public transport system and the rising price of fuel, the 150 miles per gallon that can be achieved on a motorized bicycle is very welcome and travelling along at 35 miles per hour on a summer’s day in order to spend a day birdwatching would be quite thrilling.

Although many people would say that motorized bicycles would turn an environmentally friendly mode of transport into one that produces CO2, by getting lots of people out of cars and using a more energy efficient motorized bicycle CO2 emmissions could actually be reduced as well as reconnecting many people with the environment.

Birding by bicycle really is a pleasure and one that could be enhanced by a motorized bicycle kit.