This morning on Tweet of the Day" it was the wily Water Rail. But the presenter spent most of his time telling us about examining a nest. And how wonderful it was. But my advice is, buster ... don't go up to nests and examine them. There's no need for it. You leave your scent behind. And you tread down a trail to it. Then they get found... and killed ..and eaten. All this "looking for nests" business should have been kicked out decades ago. But it still seems to be going on. And ...remember that thing I wrote about a local birder .. ... who shall be nameless ... flushing loads of snipes off their pool,. just so that they could count them. And he/she does that regularly. Well ... don't. I spoke to the Local Secretary of the organisation that runs the place, and told her about this .. and her reply was " Natural England tells us to do it." Well I say, Natural England can get stuffed. As my regular readers will know, I used to do quite a bit of bird surveying .... but I stopped when I realised that cheating, is rife ..... one I know in my little area cheats, distorts and lies about their survey protocols and results. But there's another problem with those surveys ... ..surveyors can get conflicted about their results. If they're working for an organisation, they're not sure what it "wants". If surveys show that populations are booming, they might then say they can kick out their surveyors .. it's all going well. But if results are bad, they could kick them out for that too. You could hardly blame them for manipulating the figures to "please" said Organisation. And remember ..... not everything that counts gets counted. ...... and not everything that gets counted, counts. A wise reminder of the need to be aware of what we're doing and why. Apart from all that, everything's just dandy.
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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