Here I am in my "office" at 0913 GMT and the rain is bucketing down ( Storm "Something-Beginning- with- Clot"). Grrrr. So far this pathetically icy-soggy-freezy-breezy month has been bloody crap. Apparently and appropriately, yesterday is (truly) the Most Depressing Day of the Year. January seems to drag on and on for centuries ....which twerp made it so l...o.....n.....g ? And, we're going to have at least two long days of rain .. with added wind as a free bonus. But .... something has popped through the better-lox which has galvanised me into action! Flintshire Bird Club has sent me (and the other member) a hot potato ! Yes ... there's been a "Lady-Lobby" who want the "Biscuit Hide" at Grumbling Stumps Bird Reserve to be split up to create a " Women Only"section. (!!) Crikey ! They insist on a soundproof wall and a door with a lock on it as well. But why, we ask ? Here's the case that our female friends have made for this dramatic and divisive proposal... [a] They are fed up and disgusted by the constant farting from MEN. They have even held "Hide-Fartathons" after "Sunday afternoons in the pub". [b] Ditto nose-picking, arse-scratching, gruesome eating habits etc. [c] They are relentlessly belittled by "know-it-all" MEN. [d The MEN cannot resist doing " rude things" with their telescope. I've written about "that sort of thing" here ... 218-scopes-and-bins-their-symbolic-hinterland.html [e] The MEN make too much noise, often via their hairy noses and big gobs. [f] The MEN shout rude jokes to their "mates" at the other end. [g] The MEN constantly make rude comments to and about the women. [h] MEN have been noticed reading "rude" magazines hidden inside "British Birds." [i] Strange muckings-about have been going on for years ... all by MEN I've written about that here .. here's two examples ... 80-things-to-do-in-hides-when-theres-not-much-about-1.html 83-things-to-do-in-hides-when-theres-nowt-about-2.html So ..what's going to happen we just don't know. So ..the music .... remarkably relevant !
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The Big Garden Bird Watch is looming into view .... and there was an article about it in the paper yesterday, but I wasn't impressed with it. I'm a Critical Old Hector. The first headline was rather misleading... " Feathered friends to get us twitching in our gardens " ( Twitching ? Hardly.) The second headline was rather ambiguous .. " RSPB wants us to log visitors for an hour a day" ... it runs from 29th-31st of January, and some might get the idea that you do it for an hour of each day. Which you don't ... unless they've changed the rules.... ..but I won't dwell on that. A more serious thing about it was that it had photographs of a male Blackcap, a Redpoll and a Hawfinch. One of the Rules of Birding is .. if you see a picture of a bird, there's a strong chance that you'll "see" it within a few days.... or even a few minutes. Such is the Human Mind. The very first post on this now ginormous blog featured a huge picture of a bird called the Spring Crosby. I made it from cut-out bits of other birds. There it is up there. I wished at the time that it would get into a bird book and people would start reporting sightings of it. (Now there's an experiment for you.)( But for some unknown reason it didn't happen) ( Making that picture was fun ... and absorbing ... and, importantly, cheap.) ( I think I'll make some more of them ..the Perfect Lockdown Pastime) In addition, they tell their readers that the female Blackcap has a red cap... which it hasn't. I mean, how hard is it to get it right ? It's a sort of basic requirement. And right at the end of the article, Martin Fowlie tells us what to feed them with. He's got "Martin" in there, and, rather vaguely, a "Fowl". ( and even that's got an owl in it) I wonder if there's someone in Sandy Beds called Robin Swiftdipper ? I do hope so. Well, there's O. Venbird, and let's not forget Bob O'Link ! ( As I'm writing this, a ridiculously "accurate" 327 Pinks have flown over, and some strange bird is making a noise that I don't recognise. I'm off downstairs to see if I can get a gander at it...... ) Music .. a beautiful Spanish song .... Domingo Astromántico That was the 1009th post. And 1009 is a Prime number. And the 1009th prime number is 8011.... which is also a Prime. And the 8011th prime number is 81931 .. also a Prime. How far can that sequence go ? Surely it must stop somewhere .. Everything does ! Let's suppose that Boris has just told us that 2,745,123 people have been vaccinated in the first half of January... we've got to ask ourselves ... is it true ? We're bound to be impressed that they've been recorded to the very last one. But..but... as he spoke those very words, they were probably already out of date. It looks very accurate . Suspiciously so. Right down to that final 23 ! Think of all the ways that might not be a very reliable fact. Because it's actually reliability that we need first and foremost. But that 2,745,123 could be unreliable in so many ways. For a start, there's results from thousands of separate NHS workers, GPs surgeries, Village Halls etc. And then sent to some central office that sticks them all together. And at every stage of all that, data can get lost, mis-typed, recorded twice or not at all. Oh dear oh dear. .... oh dear. Accuracy is no use if it ain't reliable. It's no use memorising pi as 3.14325662681129 ... it looks so so accurate. But it is WRONG. Let's put it in an ornithological setting now ... Old Bob tells me that he counted 8347 Canada Geese in the Old Plague Burial Field. Just think of all the things that could lead to that count being way out. For a start, Bob is indeed old, and he's shrunk to only 5' 2" , and his eyesight is dubious to say the least, as is his attention span and memory. And the hedge is 4' 11" tall ! So ... there's geese hidden by other geese, there's geese feeding with their heads and necks out of sight at the moment he's looking, some geese are flying off and some arriving, there's Old Bob forgetting where he's up to and making it up ... plus he's only using his crap ex-world-war-one bins. He's got a scope, but he can't carry it more than a few metres. But Old Bob has got his 8347 total , which gets into the yearly bird report, and is probably way off the mark. Had he been a bit more aware of all those issues, he might have been more cautious and rounded that figure to, say, 8000+, or 8-9000, and not a ridiculously "accurate" 8347, which is lacking any "reliability" at all. But it looks so temptingly "accurate." There we are then, in a world of uncertainty, unreliability and spurious accuracy. Our only consolation is ..it was ever thus. Vielleicht, alles ist Kaputt ! Now men invade the City ... These dastardly decapitations all appeared in the Flintshire Recorder last year.... ... oddly, they seem to get trickier as the months rolled by ... [1] Edge Warbler plummets to an ignominious demise. [2] Rested Grebe eaten by ox. [3] Birder startled by noisy Mew. [4] Rat in Cole occupies tit's nest-box. [5] Where are you off to now, cock ? [6] Local Libraries lack ark to transport unread books. [7] Alco sp. found comatose on local pavement, leonora reports. [8] Lackcap leads to demise of local man up local mountain in local snowstorm. [9] "Lauda" R. Vensis ( local man) shouts out of his bedroom window. [10] Old dodderer who discovers rare pupa, pops it in his pocket and pops clogs ! And as for the music .... DCFC... "different names for the same thing" .... ..you won't see a better video than this in a long while .... Have you ever been overwhelmed with beauty and marvellous-ness whilst birding ? Has the stunning beauty, or the sheer rarity of a bird made you feel dizzy, or actually fainting /passing out/collapsing to the ground ? If so, you might have been a victim of Stendhal Syndrome. Here's what some expert or other has to say about it .. Generally, it happens when there is a great amount of artistic beauty in short periods of time and they are all concentrated in the same place. Art Galleries are a hot-spot for "that sort of thing", which is why they have comfy settees scattered around the premises. It is a condition that the subject experiences as overwhelming, to the extent that they could have a panic attack, often leading to a total collapse . This syndrome is also known as the Florence Syndrome, because it has been in this city where a greater number of cases have been known. Although there is great controversy about this and although some qualify it as a true medical syndrome, others think that it is promoted by the city itself for economic purposes. [ That seems rather odd ] [ My daughter has been there, but she hasn't mentioned any side-effects ] The Stendhal Syndrome is also known as the Evil of the Romantic Traveller. Here's a handy video about it .... just in case you think I've made it up ... ( as if !) ... and here's Idles with a song about it .... ...... and here's someone experiencing it .... it is a Wallcreeper she's looking at ? Some of the simplest questions are the toughest to answer..... These last couple of days we've hardly got out of the house ... ice everywhere, slippery as hell, though I suppose in hell they won't actually get much ice. And what with The Significant Otter and me both being old and decrepit ( a terrible and inexplicable development) , it was right dodgy. We've seen lots of people falling over, and cars sliding backwards ( and forwards, but that's not very interesting) down the slope at the top of the road, what a larf ! So ... I've been garden-watching quite a bit. There's plenty going on ... The Rev is still battling with about six other male Blackbirds, there's at least two Blackcaps knocking about, a jaunty Jay, resplendent m & f Bullfinches, Starlings, a miniflock of LTT's and much much more. But then there's the Dowdy Dunnocks. How high do they EVER get ? In the "altitudinal"sense, that is. It's a thing I've never thought about till now. What's happened to my critical faculties ? The highest ascent I saw was about 75cm. That is the height of the "in-hedge" fat-feeder which explains their possible reason for reaching such a hair-raising altitude. My next thing , in the interests of Science, should be to keep budging that fat feeder up a bit every day...... and see if the Daring Dunnock keeps going up with it. But what if, on day 7, with the fat feeder at, say, 128cm, the Desperate Dunnock can no longer cope with the harsh conditions at that Dunnock-Dizzying altitude, and dies a dreadful, long-drawn-out death due to fat-ball-inaccessibility ? It's not on. I considered it for a few "scientific "seconds, but then ditched the idea to avoid 847 sleepless nights thinking about it rotting away in a shallow grave, all because of ME. But I'm sure that my 5 loyal readers will be logging all sighting of Dunnocks and their heights and sending them in to me at [email protected] or even as a comment. And then I can draw a graph and find out ... er... something or other. And while we're waiting, here's a remarkably relevant and uplifting song & dance.... [ Update : Shortly after writing all that, a Dizzyingly Daring-Do Dunnock landed on our 2-metre high trellis ... so that is the current record, until any of you lot can do better.]
It's a good title that .. "The Second Wren". It draws you in. You're intrigued. I wonder if you can guess what it refers to. Here's two fairly useless picture clues...... 2 Ad Fem. But most men look like this They look very different ...we get used to it. Crumbs ! The instructions for The Big Garden Birdwatch, hereafter called TBGBW, have always shown us little photos of the main birds we're likely to see. It is always nice to have our intelligence belittled. But, in an astonishing breakthrough, they've shown us snaps of males and females of Blackbirds, Chaffinches and House Sparrows this time. Coo !! So ...here's a thing. Ages ago, I pointed out to a waiting world that there was inbuilt bias in the protocol for TBGBW which, as far as I know, has never been addressed. Its all to do with "The Second Wren Scenario" You see a a Wren, and you write it in your notebook. It flies away. Ten tense minutes later, another Wren turns up. But ...but ... is it the same one ...or is it a "new" turn-up ?? If you can't be sure, you can't count it. On the other hand, if a male Chaffinch arrives and leaves, ..and then a female arrives, you know you've got two separate birds. That means that sexually dimorphic species like Chaffinches will tend to get recorded more often than, say, Wrens .... because when "The Second Wren" turns up it won't get counted. Maybe .. just maybe, they've got an algorithm to sort that out .... but if they have, I don't recall anyone mentioning it. So I'll leave that with you. Somewhere on here, way back in the Stone Age, I've written more extensively about this crucial issue. But I haven't tracked it down yet. So .... 'tis Music Time. But what if birds could do a bit of Shape-Shifting ? That would make a right mess of all those surveys and censuses .. oh yes. And coincidentally, here's a whole song about shape-shifting ... What if you went bird-spotting , and only managed to see 20 species due to lack of time, severe cold and ice and sheer laziness. And when you got home and wrote your measly list, you realised that you had muddled them together due to hypothermia, gormlessness and advanced decrepitude. Somehow or other you jumbled them into ridiculous pseudo-sentences .... ..to help you get started ... .. here's a simple mammalian version ..... Fat Box ..... unjumbled ..... Bat Fox ! ... right then ... you're ready .... ... each of these pseudo-sentence is made of two jumbled-up single-named UK birds ..... Pair 1 ..... Inland Jet Wack Pair 2 ...... Engine Rants Pair 3 ....... Brooks a Turd Pair 4 ..... Sun and Owl will Pair 5 .... Coil Mentor Pair 6 .... Frisk Toe Corer Pair 7 .... Wench Hair Fish Pair 8 .... Score for Trike Pair 9 .. Hark Gone Nell Errs Pair 10... We Smell Wit Our garden wasn't quite like this today ..but it was quite picturesque .... At various times today three 400 (±) pinkfeet flocks flew very high north over the house. I wondered if the marshlands to the south had frozen over to such and extent that had to look elsewhere. Another development was the arrival of a second male Blackcap in the garden.... a very welcome sight. On the other hand, the female that put in a few appearances a while ago hasn't been seen for ten days. The Rev is still around, despite intense Blackbird-battles that sometimes involve 7 males all defending their own territory, and a Jay gives close-up views daily. And here's another thing. When the weather gets icy and vicious, that's the time when we generally get something more unusual like a Goldcrest , Tree Sparrow maybe, a few Siskins and the like, but despite the recent harsh weather, ice, hail, frozen waterways etc nothing like that has happened. Yet. Bah. Plus, amazingly, I still haven't connected with any " winter birds" ... not a single Redwing or Fieldfare, no Waxwings at all, just like last year) etc. And other local birders I've met have said the same. I'm still waiting. And now, we're all stuffed as the new and prohibitive lockdown kicks in again. And everywhere is icy cold, and, er, icy. And apparently, birding is not an essential ,er, thing. And now, Die Nacht ..... A lovely Wir sind Helden song .... ( We are heroes) The Significant Otter shouted up the "office" stairs and ordered some empty boxes .... and in the box-finding-and-emptying process I found a couple of things I had written on my earlier version of this blog, the one that sadly vanished. Here's one of them .. it was typed carefully on Friday, 7th December 2009. Which UK bird has three colours in its name .. if any ? What about over the whole wide world ? My brilliant suggestion back then was Tri-coloured Heron, but for some strange reason I don't think that counts. Come on now ... how can you get a more three-coloured bird name than that ? Anyway, that's actually got four colours, and if you don't believe me ... Tri-coloured Heron 3 + Red = 4 So ... are there any more ? Can you get a real "four" ? Maybe we could contrive To conjure up a "five" Then there's stuff like Speculipastor tricolor = Magpie Starling ( no mention of what they are) And oddly mismatched ones like Ploceus tricolor = Yellow-mantled Weaver. ( the other two ?) ........ so I'll leave that for you to ponder about. ............ and are 4's ..or even 5's gettable ? There's something for you to think about .... and this song has nothing to do with it .... On a totally different theme, here's a Ted Talk about how to deal with a pandemic ...... the main part of it starts at 13:20/26:35 ..... and he predicts just about everything that's happened/not happened in the CV19 pandemic so far. When I first heard about it, the first thing I said was .... shut down every plane in the world.
We were very very lucky that the UK dealt with the two who brought the Ebola virus into the UK in time .... who knows what would have happened if they had slipped through undetected and started to infect others, causing a huge avalanche of the disease? But planes continued to fly out of China and that lead to our current shambles. |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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