Here's how to start chapter 2 of a book specially aimed at young people who might be thinking of doing a spot of birdwatching .... yes, it's only chapter 2 ... ...... you can just feel the excitement building up there !! More ! More ! ..... sorry about the slight overlap .... mind you , it gives you a bit more time to memorise those lovely long scientific names.... oh, here's some more ... goody ... .... hey.. those sub-orders are really fascinating aren't they ... I'm pleased to see there's more of them on this next bit.... Bah ! they've finished. I wish he'd put the rest of that explanation at the end on here as well ... oh, hang on, he has .... ace !!! Scrummy !!!!! Well readers, that's a section from that " Birdwatching for beginners" book which came out in 1952. I wrote a bit about it a while ago. You'll notice that he seems to assume that his readers will be familiar with Latin and a certain amount of Greek. Ha !! Oh, and he also thinks they'll know what he means by " in Latin form" ...... fat chance. I think we all agree that that's not actually the best way to draw young readers in to birdwatching. It's a bit like getting a roomful of young potential footballers to introduce them to the game, and starting with the aerodynamics of the football, complete with lots of fascinating equations and graphs. Then you could show them how really there is a great deal of chance in a game of football, illustrated by Markov Chain Theory and lots of lovely probability calculations. Then they could learn the names of all the bones in the body so they'd be prepared if they broke any. Then for homework they could calculate the surface area and volume of a football to three significant figures. That's the sort of approach that Mr. Oddie's books blew out of the window ! And after reading all that, most young boys would think ... "hey, getting a girlfriend is better than that" ...... what a nifty link eh !!
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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