Wake up there ! It's The Observer's Book of British Birds. And that's Pontyclun ..... Well .... in my ongoing " Pyramid of Bird Books" search I found a second copy of TOBOBB I didn't know I had. One of them was the 1952 verson. And it was once owned by a certain Philip Jones, who lived in Pontyclun ..which literally means Bridge the Hip. Rather sadly, on the last, blank page he's pencilled this .. 182 80 43 34 Well, somebody has. Well, dear readers, I looked at those pages ..who wouldn't ? On page 34 he's written FEMALE And page 43 has March 1, 1962 M,F ( Chaffinch) Llandod (House Sparrow) MALE June 4th Llandod June 5th Page 80 has ... Llandod (Mistle Thrush) Nest with Babies June 5th. And on page 182 ( Black-headed Gull) he has written ( in biro ) March 1st 1962 Well ! Was that it then ? Did his ornithological obsession shrivel and wither with adolescence looming ? Or did he get a much better book for his next birthday, and write his sightings in that instead ? Or did he suddenly realise the existential pointlessness of existence and get a job in insurance ? So ... here's another thing ... that copy was the 1952 version ,and had 236 species in it. But that other copy I've found, which wasn't mine either, has 226 . But unfortunately it is undated. Which is a pity, because I was going to draw a graph of the steady increase ( or decrease) in the number of species over the decades. And I know how you all love a graph. So .... dig out your copy/copies of TOBOBB and find out the year and the number of species it covers ... then send your vital data to me .... [email protected] , of, if you prefer, as a comment ... and then we can work out, for example, how many it should have in the 1993 edition, and how many it could be in 2050 or 3000 !!! If you were exceptionally keen, you could also tell me which species have been added. And any that have been slung onto the scrapheap. Vital stuff, as I'm sure you will all realise. We could even backtrack the graph and work out at what date in the past there were no British Birds for us Observers to Observe. This is vital research ( obviously) so I'm relying on you ... yes, YOU. We need to be mathematically safe. And I'm not just sitting here doing nowt either. I'm going to try to find MY actual copy which I bought in the upstairs section of Boots the Chemist in sunny Newark, Notts in approx 1960-ish. Now .. the incredibly appropriate "music" ....
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
|