You might remember aeons ago that I wrote two rather critical pieces about an "old" bird book for beginners ... "Bird Watching for Beginners" by Bruce Campbell. I was quite scathing about some of it. I was right too ! It wasn't his fault ... it was written in 1952, when bird-watching was very very different to the way it is these days. And so were young people. I should know ... a few years later I was one of them. If you don't remember them, the first one's on the far end of this link .... 3-one-of-my-first-bird-books.html .. and the 2nd one's on the end of this link .... 119-how-to-encourage-young-birdwatchers-or-not.html Here on the left is the original 1952 version, and a later version .... Well, here's another incredibly old-fashioned bit of advice from the very same book ........ "Although it may not seem part of birdwatching at first, you want to make yourself reasonably library-minded and museum-minded. When you are young it might seem a bit cheeky to go crashing into a building like a Greek Temple or a Cathedral ( or a mixture of both) and ask to be shown a book on birds or some stuffed specimens.But this is what public libraries and museums are for, and their staffs are the most helpful people I have ever met. The part of the library you want is the Reference Library, where all the important reference books are kept. Most museums have showcases with British birds in them, but in many there is also a reference collection of "skins" - that is, stuffed birds which have not been "set up" like those in the show-cases but are kept in drawers to be looked at closely. To see them you will have to ask an attendant to take you to the Curator and once you have taken that step you will have found another good ally in your efforts to get to know birds. " ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well !!! That certainly was NOT my experience with my local museum. When I was 10½ or so, I went to the little local museum in Kerwan ( anagram), and I noticed that they'd got some of the labels wrong in the stuffed birds section. For a start, they had muddled up Hedge Sparrow, Tree Sparrow and House Sparrow ... they'd swapped them around, and the Latin names were wrong too. Being a naive sort of nit, I went over to the counter and told the curator about this. He looked at me as if I was some sort of simpleton. Basically, he insisted that the labels could not be wrong. It was me that was wrong. I asked him for a bit of paper so I could write the correct labels for him. After a bit of wittering and grumbling, he got a bit of paper and a pencil. I carefully wrote out the correct labels and Latin names for the "sparrow/accentor" mix-up and a couple of other smaller spelling mistakes. Well, readers, I went back about two weeks later only to find that nothing had changed. This time I took my "Observer's Book of Birds" with me. I had realised I needed some heavy ammunition !Surprise, surprise, the old, crap labels were still there. So ... I went up to the desk again, to find a different person in attendance. Of course, he knew nothing about any of this. I wrote it all out again ... and this time I took him over to show him those incorrect labels. I also showed him the correct names in the book. Like the other one, he was very grumpy, and basically wanted me to go away. Which I did. I went back twice more ... but each time nothing had changed. I gave up. I was also irked.Very irked. But ...... This taught me an important and lasting lesson. Just because someone is grown up, wears a suit, and is behind a desk and is in a position of responsibility, it means nowt. They can still be ignorant gits. Throughout my various careers I've come across plenty of them. At least I'm a non-ignorant git. It's one step up. I've found throughout my life that this remains true right up the chain of command .... not always ... but often enough. So much for Mr. Campbell's advice. Maybe he was lucky. He was probably down south .... yes. And as for libraries .... that's for another time. Mind you, there soon won't be any. That was all sort of serious... serious-ish. A bit sad really. But now, a rather hypnotic, mystical sort of song from Top French Band Noir Désir... " Le Vent nous portera " ...as indeed it will .... Naturellement, tu veux chanteras avec cet video .... I hope museums are a bit better nowadays ... but my nearest one is very very boring, and the big one in Belfast that I visit most years is more like a labyrinth than a museum, plus, over the (almost) 50 years I've been going to it, it has dumbed down a lot.
I'm not kidding about the labyrinth ... last time I went, everybody was completely lost. The only realistic way to get out was to take any downwards set of stairs you could find ..... repeat n times ... until you got to the ground floor. And whatever you do, don't try to follow the map. It's crap. In fact, it's worse than crap. I often have a "relevant" song to go with what I write ... but this time, a relevant book cover ... I'm a variable old Hector ....
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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