A while ago, I predicted " The Death of Birding" ...here's what I wrote then ... Well, obviously birding can't last for ever ... I mean, in a few billions of years, the sun is going to fry us all to fritters.... so there's the death of birding. Probably But there are more immediate threats ... when Universal Credit, robots depriving huge swathes of the workforce of their jobs, the rise and rise of cohorts of gormless, witless, uneducated 1st-class degree-holders taking over the country and making even worse the dire state of management, not to mention the Ebola virus which will inevitably be ferried on our airlines to every country in the world, and, of course, Amazon, and all those Antisocial Media sites.... Witter, Acebook, , Bumbler, Napchat, Instagran (for the over-twelves) ..all of that and more ...reduces the world to utter chaos, birding will get a bit marginalised. Or worse. But there is a much more imminent danger to birding .... any day now, some dickhead will put a new sort of binoculars on the market ...it will have, tucked away inside its gubbins, bird-recognition software which will ID any bird within seconds and name it onscreen. And a range of telescopes that do the same. ¡ Ouch ! Oh, we'll all say we're not getting one of them, but you know what ... soon there just won't be the old sort. But "we", we happy band of real birders, will hold on to our old bins and scope and keep on using them. Maybe we'll have to do it surreptitiously as they will become valuable collectors items and be worth several Banksies ... that's the new currency that coming in soon. It's a sort of Craptocurrency that will sweep the world. But we can't hold out for ever. It will be The Death Of Birding. But on the plus side, we can revert to type...wandering round the, er. countryside ( the what ?) enjoying ( what?) watching and hearing the birds. ( ?) ( the what ?) How very odd. But it might catch on. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ OK ... let's see these new scenarios shall we .... I've thought up more ways it could wither away into nothingness . And here's a likely one ... well, three really .... DRONEBIRDING 1 Oh yes .... we could just send drones out to find and photograph and film rare birds rather than driving hundreds of miles to probably not see them at all. They could cover massive swathes of "likely spots" for us, and discover all sorts of crackers ! And we could just stay at home, annoying our companion in life, never leaving the house ( because all our jobs will be done by computers) . Smashing ! And we won't even need to "write them up" .... the on-board super-computer will do all that. Ace ! DRONEBIRDING 2 Not only could we do that, we could also set the drones to scare those rare birds away once they had been photographed and filmed ! Ha! That would stop others from ticking the little sods !!! DRONEBIRDING 3 Even more startlingly, if that's a word, we could get the drone to actually BRING THE RARITY ROUND TO OUR HOUSE ! Blimey !! Garden Tick or what !!!!! As a sideline, we could charge everyone £8:50 to come round to our house and tick it. We could pretend that the extra 50p would go to conservation charities. Hey .. it could even make "raids" into other countries ... we could get it to cart Wallcreepers round to our house!! I'm up for that. And ... we could claim that it would be good for our carbon footprint. Ornithology + Philanthropy combined. So ..there we have it. I can't help thinking there must be snag of some sort with all that. Er .... something's going to muck it all up I'm sure. Maybe you can think of something. Maybe we'll miss all those "rare" days .... los días raros ....
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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