Most weeks The Significant Otter and me trundle along to the Souper-Park-It to get lots of stuff. Tweetabix, Crab-badges, Parrots, Baked Beings,that sort of thing. Except that I don't do any of it ... I bog off to the nearby river and watch birds. I used to take my lovely dog, The Shredder, with me, a fine companion, but she went to the Big Kennel in the Sky a few weeks ago so I'm on my own now. She used to feature on here quite a bit. We miss her a lot. But on to business now ... Well now .. last winter, I noticed something. Yes. Oh-ho. Usually there's 200 + gulls to go through, hoping to get the Occasional Med Gull or better.... and in the winter months there's quite a good number of Common Gulls... so called because, er, they're not especially common. But ... but ... last winter they drastically dropped in numbers. Plus, there weren't many of them. Now this could be a local thing, don't know, could be a national thing, don't know.... all I know is, there used to be good double-figures of the silly things, but all last winter , by my little bit of river, there were only 2 or 3, sometimes none. BUT ... it's a big but ... I never counted them. Any decent birder would dismiss my uncounted,unfounded, un-supported-by-figures opinion as "depressingly anecdotal". And they'd be right. It's a neat phrase, that. I should use it more often. I got it from one of my "line managers" who dismissed most of our complaints as " depressingly anecdotal." What happens is, at first you think the smaller numbers are just a blip, or just late arrival, and by the time you've realised a month or two later that the numbers are staying low, you've missed counting the early numbers. But I wish I had now. I could have drawn a graph, worked out some Haverages, Stranded Devastations, Bra charts, Freak-Whimsy diagrams, terrific. So there's your moral for the day ... but I can't get all high and mighty about it, because I've stopped doing very much counting.... certainly in national and local surveys. But there was ..and is.. a good reason for that ... I know that a lot of not-following-the-protocols goes on, and other types of cheating, in all sorts of ways, and when I found out about it I just wasn't going to bother with it any more. Lots of you have probably read my posts about the things that go on , but here's the links if you haven't... 96-ways-to-cheat-with-bird-survey-1.html 97-another-way-to-cheat-in-bird-surveys.html ... but this winter, I'm going to count those Common Gulls, assuming any at all turn up, and then I'll .... er ..... draw the mentioned-above graphs. I might even do some colouring-in. Hey ..a Buzzard's just flown over the house ... going WSW ...... smashing. I counted it. 1. You have to start somewhere. And now, the music ... Neil Young .. " The Needle and the Damage Done " .. you probably want to sing along ... here's the words video ... I'm posting this a day later , the 26th ... it's National Dog Day today.
Late News ... there's a Stilt Sand and a Red-Necked Phal at Frampton RSPB. Here's the link to a video of them .. maybe they've been there for a while, I've no idea. I've already "got" them both !! In fact, Stilt Sand was one of the first rarities I ever saw. 9/5/84 Newman's Flash. twitter.com/i/status/1032727245624893443 By the way..this is actually the 198th post ... because I've only just noticed that way way back in April there were two posts labelled 41 . Ouch. I'll sort it out .... you'll see.
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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