There was a program on the box a few days ago which tried to demonstrate differences in brain activity which lead to different male/female behavior patterns etc. It was deeply flawed in parts, well, in my opinion it was .... but it was interesting. Anyway, I got to thinking about male and female birders . For a start, what is the percentage of female birders ? You could maybe have an intelligent guess of that percentage .... and a bit later you'll get at least one figure that will give you a possible inkling of what that percentage actually is. So ..... have an informed guess. I "did" it like this ... I dug out of the depths of my chaotic "office" an old copy of " Rare Birds". It was Volume 5 Number 3 .... July-September 1999. And at the back there was a list of the top 656 twitchers/listers/whatever at 1st November 1999. And here's what I found out....... Overall, there were 32 females in the list, out of a total of ( see above) 656 tickers. That's 4.88% ..we'll call it 5%. Then I broke down the results .... the first 100 ....... 1st to 100th 1 female Then the 2nd hundred....... 101th to 200th 5 females 201th to 300th 6 females 301 to 400th 5 females 401 - 500th 5 females 501 - 600th 6 females 601 - 656th 4 females I was surprised to see that ( apart from the 1st 100) the number of females was about the same for each tranch. We've got to look at some extra factors ..... presumably quite a lot of "big tickers" don't actually reveal their totals. Some of them could be complete liars. I suspect that there could be a gender bias there. Could it possibly be that males might ( perish the thought) lie more than females ? Another big factor ..... all those 656 people were avid twitchers ..... and therefore not a representative sample of the whole range of birders/birdwatchers/bird-spotters/nature lovers and every other type you can imagine. They're all important. Moving on ..... that was 1999. If we went back ,say, 50 years, I expect the figures would show fewer female birders. So .... 5% is a sort of benchmark to compare with other years. BUT ... how do we get comparative figures for the pre-1999 -ers ... and post-1999 would be a big help too. AND ... I haven't got more recent copies of "Rare Birds" to provide more recent data. or older ones for that matter. SO ...... If any of you lot out there have got more recent copies of Rare Birds, or sources of similar data, you could maybe send me comparative figures .... then I could draw a graph! We like a graph !! ALSO ... you might have other sources .... all the "local" mags I've looked at either haven't got those sort of results, and mostly their lists don't have the "first names", just initials. If you have any comparable figures, my email is [email protected] That's because, as some of you already know, because I run a seaside bar. Well, used to. But I'll leave you with that lot to think about ..... and some music ...
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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