Unfortunately ( hum-hum) several of this year's exam papers used by the Flintshire Bird Club were "leaked" by some unscrupulous person. The fortunate thing was, however, the general public were able to see the high standard that is being set by the examiners... here's question 1 ... I think you will see that incredibly high standard they're talking about ... not only is the question about a bird they will never have heard of, there are several technical terms which have been used to baffle the unsuspecting candidates..... Let's see for ourselves shall we .............. [1] Study this extract from a paper about the Quelea in Tropical Africa .. " In the Tricolor the commonest clutch size is 3, while 4 is proportionately rather commoner than in the Quelea. The third nestling in a brood sometimes starves, which suggests, as in the Quelea, that the average clutch may correspond with the greatest number of young that the parents can normally raise." [a] Are you very sad about that starving 3rd nestling ? Tick your choice ... YES no [b] Which is the longest word in this extract ? Tick your choice ... as the PROPORTIONATELY [c] How many colours would you expect the Tricolor to have ? Tick your choice... you are allowed ± 1 either way.... 0 1 2 3 4 83 [d] What do you think the most suitable average would be for this study. Tick your choice .. make it clear what you MEAN. MEAN MEDIAN MODE [e] If you wished to draw a graph of the data, which of these would you use ... Tick your choice... Newspaper Sandpaper Graph Paper Tracing paper Toilet paper. [f] The full name of the Quelea in this study is the ?????-Faced Quelea. Which of these ,in your opinion, is its correct name ? Tick your response..... Lack-Faced Quelea Back-Faced Quelea Slack-Faced Quelea Black-Faced Quelea Sack-Faced Quelea Blank-Faced Quelea ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So ... there you have it ... a rigorous and testing test ranging over such topics as the high mortality rate of young birds, technical terms ( are they too long these days ?), bird nomenclature, statistics, graphical representation of data and of course, interpretation of pictorial representations of exotic species requiring close, concentrated reading of the questions and a broad, but flexible, knowledge base. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hey... I might show you some of the other questions ... in the public interest of course........... But now, after all that academic, er, stuff, here's the excellent Yelle and a video that gets sillier as it goes along ... could it be an allegory of life's progress ? Maybe not.
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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