After all that in-depth maths I did to work out when the UK had no birds at all. I thought it would be a good idea to go into the future of the " British List" as well. (If you haven't read all about it, go back to post 873 ) So .... I tried to find out what the " British List" was at various times in the past ... and it was surprisingly difficult to find. I tried lots of different ways of wording my question, but found out very little. I also consulted my many " UK Rare Bird" books ... they're very good at telling you where and when various new species turned up,and who found them, but no good at all at telling you that they were the 627th or the 503rd. Here's what I've dug up .. January 2020 621 August 2019 620 ( White-Rumped Swift) December 2015 614 July 2008 600 ( Yelkouan Shearwater) December 2007 574 Not a lot to go on ! So, the obvious thing to do is .... in ± 12 years the "list" got 47 new species. And that's almost 4 new species per year. So ... we start with the Dec 2007 figure .... 574. So ,we'll backtrack it at that " 4/year" rate .... that's going back 143½ years .. and that means the " zero-birds event horizon is 2007 - 143½ = June 1863 (!) .... hmmmm. ... but ... but .. but ... there WERE lots of birds in the UK in 1863. .. fair enough, they were mostly being shot and eaten .... ... but something's obviously not quite right. ... and that's because the "graph" isn't really linear. .... because as time goes on, the number of " new" species/year" is dwindling. ... so the curve is getting flatter and flatter over the years. ...... for obvious reasons ..there's only so many candidate birds available. And we can demonstrate that by going the other way.... into the future. Going forwards in time, at the " 4 newbies per year" rate ... ..... by 2050 we would have 621 + (30 x 4) = 741 ( blimey ... what would they be?) ... by 2100 we would have 621 + 80 x 4) = 941 ( shite !) ..and that's what you get with limited data ... GIGO Garbage in, Garbage out. And then, there would be thise fatuous "fact" .. ... the UK would have the Entire World List" ( 8700-ish) by ... ? ..well, you should be able to work it out for yourselves. ... by extrapolating from the 2020 result ... ... cue appropriate music ..... ...have YOU "worked it out" yet ?
.. if not, follow this ni ft y tr ail .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4040 (an odd coincidence.) 2 x 2020 ?!*&$£"?
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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