Now this is one that I know really happened. And it's more serious than the ones I showed you last time. That's assuming that any of all this is "serious" in the" Great Scheme Of Things." You're given area to survey.. Your instructions are to walk for a certain time or distance through the area, keeping a record of all the birds you see. You might be given a specific route, or devise your own. So ... this particular surveyor, we'll call her "Minnie", gets given a moorland area to cover. Before she does the "real " survey, she goes on a bit of a recce to decide on a good route, representative of the area. Maybe she's given a specific route ,,,, but... She finds the area pretty empty ... not much to record really. She notices there are a few houses with gardens ...and bird tables ... in the area. There's quite a lot to tick off there... and not much anywhere else. So ... on the actual day, she doesn't walk the route at all. She gets in her car, and drives from one " garden full of feeders and birds" hotspot to another... and another.. Then, and only then, does she actually do any walking in the less bird-rich bits. This totally ignores the "protocol" that the surveyors are meant to be following. " So what ?" ..you might say. Well, here's what ... Let's say that Minnie's results are put into an "Atlas" -style publication. And let's say that 10 years later they repeat the survey to assess population trends etc. And when the new surveyor goes over "her" section the "proper" way, slowly, on foot, not whooshing from one hotspot to another in a car ... the results will be very different. Populations of Blue Tits, Great Tits, Wrens etc will have collapsed dramatically ! Those bird-packed gardens won't get the 5-star treatment, not to anything like the same extent anyway, but the moorland birds will seem to have rocketed in numbers . The whole bird population overview will be skewed dramatically. And I know that this has happened. I've mentioned before that I don't do surveys any more... and that scenario was the main reason why. Why would I waste my time doing things properly when the results were going to made meaningless by others who don't do things the same way ? Why indeed. Sometimes I can be a serious old Hector. Here's a hell of a song ... Massive Attack ... "Teardrop" This " added extra" is the answer to a question I'm going to ask in about a year's time .... it's the two birds I'm going to write about in a future article....
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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