I don't suppose that many of you out there will be old enough to remember the Great Wren Collapse in 1972. Back then , before running water, before sanitation and electricity, we had to do what we could to survive. And so did the birds. In 1972 nature-lovers began to notice that wrens were staggering around their gardens in obvious distress, and began to die out in droves when they couldn't catch their usual prey, which in those days was mainly rats. What was to be done ? Well, luckily, researchers at the Palindromic Advanced Research Project (PARP) had been looking into old manuscripts, mainly written by witches, sages, necromancers and downright charlatans when they came across a strange thing .... back in those days ( around 1957) they believed that remedies which were palindromes worked far better than the others. Their first big discovery was Lionoil .... lions, as you know, are always roaring for some reason, and their throats get very sore. What they needed was a medicine which was the same backwards as forwards .... like " Lionoil." Readers, it worked. One teaspoonful of Lionoil twice a day got the lions back to full health, but it did more than that ... it got those boffins thinking up other possibilities. Maybe there were other palindromic medicines they could invent. All children know that when they are ill , pop is the best thing to get them through it. It's palindromic ! And of course mum and dad are the best people to look after them ... they're palindromic too. Grown men, of course, prefer a madam every time. Anyway, when these experts heard about the wrens which were having trouble with their little legs so they couldn't catch any rats, they set to work on the problem and soon came up with Leg-gel .... applied hourly to each leg every day and night for a week, it worked a treat and was so effective that rats got a bit scarce too. But that's another story.... and here it is.... it's enough to say that RatstaR made the remaining few rats famous overnight and they were able to live in swanky hotels, wear inappropriate clothes and generally swan about simply being famous. And more importantly, they were well away from their major predator, the wren. There's that thing about gnats losing their lovely tangy taste in the Falklands a few years ago...this caused a mass starvation amongst Swifts and Hirundines who wouldn't eat them any more. Bird-lovers all over the islands were panic-stricken until the boffins at PARP did a bit of chemistry and invented Gnatang .... it restores their tangy taste ... and within a few hours the swifts etc started eating them again to everyone's delight except the poor old gnats. One of the most remarkable ones was developed to help Puffins .... around the UK Puffins were showing signs of respiratory problems so something had to be done. Within weeks the experts at the PARP had produced a handy nasal spray which did the job perfectly. It was marketed as Puffinsniffup ... or PUFFINSNIFFUP as it appeared on the label. ..which saved our lovely Puffins ! They even learned to self-medicate ... little spray-cans with tiny nozzles were pushed into the soil by each burrow, and the Puffins son learned to plug each nostril onto the tiny tube and press down to get a measured dose of puffinsniffup® and then go about their normal business of entertaining tourists. That's the power of Palindromic Medicine. Even Ferdinand de Lesseps, the brains behind the Panama Canal, hoped it might work for him .... on his gravestone it says .... A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA And as for the music, it's another of Death Cab for Cutie's killer songs. " Marching Bands of Manhattan" I've picked a words video so you can sing along the 2nd time round. It's that sort of song. It goes to the heart and the head. I was amazingly chuffed when I discovered that Puffins was "sniffup" backwards !
I felt even more big-headed than usual. You couldn't make it up. But I did.
0 Comments
Yes, it's true... here's an example ... it's by the 1920's bird-lover Elspeth Gwendoline Pargeter ( 1892-1931). See the robin on the bough I wonder what he's thinking now In the sky the birds all fly exuberantly, I wonder ... why ? The albatross ..ill-omen'd bird ! He neither sings nor says a word He is as silent as the sea on which he flies, eternally. O feathered friends, I love you so it saddens me when you must go. The little dunnock on its twig why is it not twice as big ? Or twice as small, or half as dull upon these things we all must mull but see ! The gentle kittiwake has eaten all our Christmas cake. See what I mean ... it's cack! Here's another one.. this time by Geraldine Harkness-Green ( 1906-1961) THE GANNET by Geraldine Harkness-Green. It swoops and steers above the wave and cares not for its steely tint it speeds its prey to gloomy grave its eye a thing of doom and glint haddock, mackerel, goby, sprat all shall perish, be sure of that as he dives with gleaming bill in amongst the teeming krill emerging from the surging sea triumphantly, triumphantly it speeds away to Skapa Flow on feathery wing, with eye aglow. ..the actual poem is a lot longer than that, but critics agree that was the best bit. As she honed her craft, she became more and more of a minimalist, and eventually, shortly before her death, the first acknowledged miniminimalist. Well, I hope you will agree with me now that all bird poetry is crap, and utter crap at that.... and if you find some really top crap stuff, you could send it to me at [email protected] It's got to be really duff though .. the competition is stiff out there. Hey ...we could have a whole special post of the most awful bird poetry in the universe... what a thought ! Come on, get, er, looking. But now, something a bit more inspiring ... it's going to be Wir sind Helden and the thunderous but thoughtful "Denkmal" ... killer riffs, amazing audience .... "Sie haben uns ein Denkmal gebaut" About 6 years ago, the Significant Otter broke her foot. Suddenly, my birding activities more or less ground to a halt. It was amazing how much she couldn't do .... and what she could do was very slow. I always needed to be around in case anything went wrong as well. And even after the months of recuperation, she didn't feel she could start driving again, so I ferried her around everywhere for over a year. This was pretty awful for both of us. And it collapsed most of my birding activities drastically. But I did a very rational and positive thing. Rather than complaining about not being able to whizz off all over the place in search of birds, I decided to do everything I could within a short distance of where I live. I got out the OS map and drew a 3km radius around my house, to create a unique-to-me personalised "patch". I christened it the "3K." Nobody could do better than me in my unique dinky circle. It was mine and mine alone. That in itself was quite a neat thing! And what's more, I could get around it on foot if I had to. I'm lucky enough to live close to an estuary, a river, several ponds and lakes, a big wooded park, a canal, a salt marsh.... and even the area around my house is pretty productive too. I worked "my" 3K avidly for the next 5+ years ..... far beyond the need to. It was good to be out of the rat-race, and not to be too bothered about distant rarities. After all, I'd seen a hell of a lot of stuff and could hardly complain that I hadn't had a good bash. And now I've gone a stage further. I don't year-list any more. I record the highlights of what I see day by day, but I don't total it all up ... I couldn't tell you what my "year list" is so far this year, nor what it was last year. I just enjoy what I see as I go along. And I have to say, I find it quite relaxing. I suppose nowadays they'd call it downsizing. Here's a Kate and Anna McGarrigle song ... and a beautiful one too ... " Petite Annonce" ..... Je cherche une homme qui a cinq pieds trois
Moi je n'suis pas fille du Roi Ou bien ca va Ou ca va pas S'il vous plait repondez-moi Qui annonce recoit reponse Qui demande a recompense Qui annonce recoit reponse Qui demande a recompense Mais je n'ai que cinq pieds deux Pourtant je ne suis pas boiteux C'est tu trop C'est tu trop peu Repondez pour l'amour de Dieu J'en ai assez d'etre seul chez-moi C a creve le coeur et puis le foie J'eloigne les chiens J'effraie les chats J'fais peur aux petits enfants Je ne fume que du bon tabac J'aime les souris, j'hais les rats A deux ou trois Ou quatre pattes Vilains ou bien aristocrates Cinq deux, cinq trois Oeil de verre, jambe de bois Militaire Debonnaire Mais surtout du savoir faire I was 32. I had just read Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book. I was in a caravan in Northern Ireland. I opened the local paper, the Belfast Telegraph. Big headline .... birdwatchers flock to Bangor to spot a rare Bonaparte's Gull ! Coo ! Cripes ! Jings ! From where I was sitting it was about 2-3 miles down the coast.I had never seen what you would call a "rare bird" even though I had been a birdwatcher of sorts from the age of 12 or so. No money, no transport, living in a complete dump called Widnes, my opportunities were few. So ... I explained to The Significant Otter that I was going for a walk to see a rare bird .. maybe ... and off I went, with my crap pair of binoculars ... or "bins", as Mr. Oddie had told me to call them. I had no idea as to exactly where this bird actually was, except in the vaguest terms. But I had looked it up in my battered Collin's Bird Guide where there was a brief description in the "extreme rarities" bit at the back. I had walked a long way, and had more or less given up when I got to a car park, and most of the car park was a big puddle ... and in the puddle was a gull. A small gull. It was a Bonaparte's Gull. In the same puddle as me ! I remember thinking at the time, as we both stood there, that this was probably the rarest bird I would ever see. How wrong I was ! But that's another story. You'll never guess what the next rare bird I saw was ... and how I found out about it !! No way. OK ...music ... Wir Sind Helden ... "Wenn es passiert" ... very appropriate actually .... what a bloody gorgeous song ! The Significant Otter and me had a tiff this morning. A barny. Une chamaillerie. Dadl. Eine Auseinandersetzung ! One of our numerous electrical contraptions wasn't working, and the green light was on. I pointed this out to the S.O. and she replied .. "what green light?" The thing was, she saw it as white. Totally white. But to me it was, is, and always has been bright, ferocious green. The S.O wasn't happy about this, and made her feelings clear. Needless to say, it was me who was wrong, not her. That was her strong position, and she was not going to budge. I was the barmy twerp not her. OK ...the facts. I am not colour-blind in any official way. I have a lovely copy of that book that has all those dotty diagrams in it where some people see an L and other people see a W ...or whatever. I get all of them right. Here's a couple of them ...some people see one number, some another .. and it's mostly males, because one of the commonest forms of colour-blindness is carried on the male chromosome. Anyhow, it occurred to me that this might be affecting some people's bird identification skills... especially males ... and birding is predominantly a male activity ... females have far more common sense. For some fairly unexplained and baffling reason.... people see that dress up at the top there in (mainly) two completely different ways ... what are its colours when you look at it ?... now try it with a few other people. It makes you think .... it can be quite disturbing. I've read several learned accounts as to why this happens, and I'm not convinced by any of them... and I don't think they are either. Now transfer these colour-perception issues to birding.. all those American Warblers, those superbright hummingbirds, all those foreign kingfishers, rollers, bee-eaters, our UK finches, buntings etc .Crumbs. There's plenty of scope for ID disasters there .. then there's thousands and thousands of moths ! Cripes" Beetles !!! Fungi ! Spiders!! "As all the Germans say .. Oh Weh! Oh Weh ! Oh Weh !" How true. Maybe if certain Rarity Descriptions from the past were scrutinised in the light of all this, there might be a few "changes of mind" ... who knows? But here's the best one ... years ago, there I was in an exam room, English Language GCSE it was. After about 20 minutes they all got to a question where you had to study a poster, and then answer questions about it. It was a rather garishly-coloured poster ... anyhow, hands started to go up. All male hands, as it happens... and guess what ...they couldn't make head or tail of the pictures ,,, they were red/green colour blind ! And of course exactly the same disaster was happening in hundreds of other schools all over the place. Oh, Calamity !! You would think that the exam boards might have noticed this ... but I have a very jaundiced view of the capabilities of all these managerial dolts. Most of them couldn't piss into a bucket. And the worst thing is, they'll blame somebody else for it too , and get them to clear up the mess. OK ... that's enough serious and worthy stuff .. let's have some music ... this is a real blast this is ... it's Manu and " Toi et Moi" .. turn it up to 11 !! It's "one more" isn't it. I'm going to ... who says the French can't do pop music eh !! Here's my ......... 4 RULES OF MANAGEMENT
[1] Management are all crap. [2] Management looks after itself. [3] Management despises all below them. [4] Management expands ... and keeps on expanding. Here are my " Rules of the rules of management [1]When dealing with Management, keep these handy Rules in mind. [2] Never reveal the Rules of Management to The Management. [3] Make sure everybody else knows The Rules Of Management. We're having the Music spot first today ... The Be Good Tanyas ... ""It's not happening".... Yes, that beautiful song is called " It's not Happening" .. by the wonderful Be Good Tanyas. I love those understated but powerful songs. In the wacky world of birding we can all have these "it's not happening" times ...for various reasons. Everyone get sequences of bad luck ... from the local to the national .... you can go for weeks without seeing the kingfisher on your nearby bit of water, that's the local level, and at the other end of the spectrum you can miss the "target bird" of a whole series of twitches and you begin to think the whole world is against you. Conspiracy theories fill your head, what-ifs start to congregate, you start to wonder if you shouldn't take up moon-spotting or lichen-listing ... they tend not to fly away at least. I had a big attack of "'it's not happening" two winters ago, when a local Waxwing flock eluded me for weeks on end. True, they were very unreliable and short-staying at any one location, but even so ... it was a poor do! I began to cast doubt on various sitings .... I started to kid myself that some people were stringing tree-perching starlings, or that some reports were pure invention on the part of the duckmuggers* who claimed them. That's how it all gets to you. I got them in the end..after I had completely given up on the beggars. Jan 1st 2017 ... there were 22 of them right in front of me. Rather oddly, I didn't see any more until Feb 1st .... hmmm ..do I see a pattern emerging ? No. But there they were, even closer. I even photographed the little dodgers. And I got to show them to quite a few other people.... everyone likes them. So what's my message about all this? Well, all I can really say is, is that whether you see a bird or not doesn't actually matter very much, in the great scheme of things. That's why I tend to read the footy first in the paper ... it's exciting, it's fascinating, but it doesn't really matter. And then I do the crossword .... for the same reason. So your birding should be like that ... it's fascinating, often exciting, it gets you out and about, but ultimately it doesn't really matter. Smashing ! Rubbish photographs #5638 .... spot the Waxwing ... there were far more ...honestly ! But not right then .... * Duckmugger ... I wrote about birding slang on here recently .. have a look ... but in case you haven't time, a duckmugger is a birder with an overactive imagination who deludes him/herself that he's seen something that he/she hasn't. It comes from the Welsh verb dychmygu ... to imagine. Technical note ... you can blow that photograph up just by holding down the CTRL key and whizzing the wheel on your mouse round .... so there! I wrote this in late January, after watching a short promotional item on the news about The Big Garden Birdwatch ...as you will see, I was not impressed ! Well.... this morning there was a little 5-minute "thing" to promote the Big Garden Birdwatch. I don't want to be rotten but .. it was very very poor. "V. Poor" as Vic and Bob would say. Where do we start. They talked about Hawfinches ...whilst showing a picture of a House Sparrow. Then they talked about house sparrows whist showing a picture of something else. I can't even remember what it was... maybe it was a Hawfinch. Then they talked about really unusual birds spotted on previous BGBWs. They mentioned White-Tailed Eagle. But, they pointed out, it was flying high over the garden. I don't think they count. They also seemed to imply that you count all the birds you see. But you don't. The funniest thing was right at the end. They had this family, mother and 3 little kids in their dinky garden. The presenter ...no doubt some nurk with a degree in Nature Studies said " OK, off you go and fill up the bird feeders." So up they got, and we watched them go up to the bird feeders. Which were already totally full up. So they just started swapping then around aimlessly. Brilliant. So that was all very entertaining and totally expected at Mini-Birding Mansions. But here's another thing ...an inherent flaw in the survey protocol. (In my humble opinion.) Species like House Sparrows which are sexually dimorphic will rack up more sighting compared to ,say, Robins, because with Robins the sexes look the same. So a male and female Robin turning up separately will only be counted as 1 Robin. Whereas a male and female House Sparrow turning up separately will be counted as two. Hah !! This means that Robins,Magpies etc will be unduly under-represented relative to House Sparrows, Bullfinches and the like. Just saying. Today's music is an essential pick ... Joanna Newsom ... "Swansea" ... the American one, not the Welsh one by the way ... If you want to come on down,
down with your bones so white, watch the freight trains pound into the wild, wild night How I would love to gnaw, to gnaw on your bones so white, and watch as the freight trains paw, paw at the wild, wild night. All these ghost towns, wreathed in old loam (Assateague knee-deep in seafoam) -- Ho Swansea! Buttonwillow! Lagunitas! Ho Calico! And all these beastly bungalows stare, distend, like endless toads -- endlessly hop down the road. Borne by wind, we southward blow. And yonder, wild and blue, the wild blue yonder looms. 'Till we are wracked with rheum, by roads, by songs entombed. And all we want to do is chew, and chew, and chew! Dear one, drive on, when all we want to do is chew, and chew, and chew. And if you want to come on down down with your bones so white. Watch the freight trains pound into the wild, wild night. How I would love to gnaw, to gnaw on your bones so white, and watch as the freight trains paw, paw at the wild, wild night, paw at the wild, wild night, paw at the wild, wild night. There's a famous joke about a Welshman who gets marooned on a desert island. Years later a ship arrives, and he shows them around ..there's the pub, there's the rugby pitch, and there's the two chapels. The ship's captain asks the obvious question .... " Why two chapels?" "Well, it's obvious innit ! That's the one I go to, and that's the one I don't go to!" Yes. Indeed. A very male thing that. And yes, there's places I don't go to. For different reasons. For a start, there's Snettisham. Big, famous birding area in Norfolk. I've been "there" several times. I've got maps, directions, more maps, advice, I've got books, articles... the lot. But do you know what ? I've never found the bloody place ! I've ended up in all sorts of other places .... I suspect I've been very close to it. But I've never actually found it. So ... I'm not going there any more. It's too humiliating. I'M NOT GOING... so there. NOT GOING. Then there's a place I'll call "X". Yes, "X". I used to go there a lot, it's one of the best birding spots around where I live. But I haven't been there for many years. And it's all because I've fallen out with the person who DOES go there. . He's there all the time ! Let's call him/her "Mr/Ms X". That's a very male thing too. It's not my fault, but I'm not going there any more. ← full stop !! (!) Here's a more subtle one .... sometimes we go to places which can be quite good for birds ... but my companion in life, The Significant Otter, she wants to go to the "wrong" bit of it. Instead of going by the shore, she wants to go along some crappy old path over the bloody fields. Fields! What use are they. ? Or instead of walking round the lake she decides to go through the boring woods. Once she decided she wanted to walk along the site of a filled-in canal. What !! Totally birdless. And come to think of it, I'm not too keen on woods either. I've twice been seriously lost in woods and it's not good. How the hell Robin Hood managed to find his way around is a mystery to me. And woods, despite their "beauty" and "serenity" are pretty bird-poor at the best of times. My advice is ... tick the few "woody" birds you need and then leave them alone. And I don't go up mountains any more because I'm old and knackered. Seriously ! When I used to go birding in N. Ireland during " The Troubles" there were lots of places I simply couldn't go to .... they were too dangerous. There's a bird reserve on the outskirts of Belfast that can catch you out... if you take a wrong turn at the roundabout you suddenly find yourself in a "sectarian enclave" where huge musclebound blokes stride shirtless through the mean streets, and every flat surface has giant English flags and huge murals of hooded rifle-toting thugs, and all the pavements are painted red white and blue. We'll say no more about them. You just turn the car round sharpish and get out. Eek. Benacre Broad was a bit of a "Snettisham" for years ..... but that's another, happier story. No doubt there's places you don't go either. I hope I'm not the only one. Anyhow, enough of gloom and doom. Here's Top Spanish band Vetusta Morla and the remarkable "La Deriva" He tenido tiempo de desdoblarme
Y ver mi rostro en otras vidas Ya tiré la piedra al centro del estanque He enterrado cuentos y calendario Ya cambié el balón por gasolina Ha prendido el bosque al incendiar la orilla He escuchado el ritmo de los feriantes Poniendo precio a mi agonía Familias de erizos en sus manos frías Habrá que inventarse una salida Ya no hay timón en la deriva Has tenido pulso para engancharme Alistado en ejércitos suicidas Me adentré en el bosque y no encontré al vigía Habrá que inventarse una guarida No quiero timón en la deriva Cada cual que tome sus medidas Hay esperanza en la deriva Habrá que inventarse una salida Que el destino no nos tome las medidas Hay esperanza en la deriva J T R Sharrock has written a puzzle book ( see post # 8) and it includes quite a few problems based on bird surveys........ But I've got a much more baffling one.... and here it comes. Suppose you do a bird survey.... and here's the result... In your first site you found 2 male waxwings out of 8 ... that's 2/8 are males. In your 2nd survey you find 4 males out of 10 birds ... that 4/10 are males. So we combine the results... 2/8 + 4/10 = 6/18 So 6/18 are males. ...that's one-third of them are males. You get that 6/18 by adding the top numbers ... 2 + 4 =6 and then the bottom numbers .... 8 + 10 = 18 And it's true that you have got 6 males out of 18 birds. Here's the same process, with the same results, in a different setting ... You'll all remember tests at school ... often you would have two "papers" and the teacher would write the marks at the top for you. It might look like this .... 2 + 4 8 10 = 6/18 or 1/3 Fair enough. A third. And it's 6/18 because you've added the tops ( 2 + 4) and the bottoms (8+10 =18) And it's true that you got 6 questions right out of 18. Fair enough. BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT ........ when you add fractions in school you don't add the tops and the bottoms. It gives you stupid results. An obvious example is a ½ + ½ ► add tops and bottoms ► 2/4 = ½ !!! Now that is an obviously bonkers result ! So .... we have a paradox here ... when we add fractions in school, we don't add the tops and the bottoms ...we've just seen how it gives you daft results. But ... it gave us "correct" results in our bird survey .. and that test. If you still don't believe it, here's another example to really make it clear that adding the tops and bottoms will give a stupid answer ... ¾ + ¼ add tops and bottoms ► 4/8 = ½ !!!!!! How can that be right ? It can't ... it's bonkers again. Yes, it's a paradox all right In our survey results, adding the tops and bottoms gave us the "right" answer. But when we do it in maths lessons, it doesn't. Cripes !!! There's something funny going on!! Could I possibly have led you all down the garden path ? But if I've misled you, how ? So now, I'll leave you all to go mad trying to work out what's right and what's wrong ! And more importantly, why ! Tell you what ...we'll have a bit of music. Y Cyrff .... " Seibiant" ... Y Cyrff = The bodies ( though you won't find it in a dictionary) Seibiant = leisure, respite. And now, as a "mystery" bonus thing, exactly two years into the future I'm going to ask you lot a question, and here's the answer ..... Here's a rather odd video I found on't net ... as you will see, should you choose to do so. As the title says, it's about what birders might have a go at when they get old and doddery. Well that one came as a " ready-made" ..but I intend to invent some similarly oddball ideas to keep decrepit birders out of mischief. Watch this space..... but not until you've had a listen to this .... and watch closely, because there's a bird in it ... you only get a fleeting view, so sharpen those ID skills as you enjoy the song .. it's the excellent Diam's and " Enfants du Desert" .... So .... maybe you've just got your first " Pop Music Video Tick" .... or maybe not.
And by the way, he was very disappointed with that 40 piece jigsaw he said he was getting .... it turned out that the box actually contained four "T" pieces which didn't really fit together properly at all. You couldn't make it up ! |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
|