Yes, more gormless excepts from my newly-discovered but long-lost "magazine" which the world has been waiting for for the last 68 years.... this bit highlights one of the most frequent hazard for ringers ... it's happened at all levels from beginner to ,er, expert.....including me. Next up .... an advert for the latest binoculars ... I had to monetise the thing somehow or other ... .. not a bad idea actually .... now this reveals the ancientness of the mag .... I didn't even have a TV when I wrote this lot ! ... and here's another frequent magnitude error that any of us could make ... and now, the extremely popular " Cartoon Caption Competition" OK... now it's your turn to " have a go" ... come up with a better caption than anybody else, and you might receive an amazing prize.... or not. Probably not. Send yours in to [email protected] .... I hope you're "liking" all my little words ... ... that's originally a Magnetic Fields song ...
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I've been threatening you all for a while with the unlikely discovery of my two long-lost "Silly Birding Magazines" I wrote many many years ago . I had more or less given up on the whole thing, but this afternoon I found one of them .. or rather, I found the "original" typed paged and some drawings etc. Here's the stunning front cover ..... spot the "Letraset" ... it was all we had ! It's a sort-of much younger me, between the time when my hair was down to my waist and having hardly any hair at all. That narrows it down quite a bit. ..and here's a " hijacked cartoon" where I nicked the picture from some magazine or whatever and made my own caption to go with it ... .... and I hijacked this photo from somewhere and wrote it up as a "Mystery Bird Competition" .... all very BB-ish.... or Not BB-ish. So ... that's a bit of a "taster" .... there's quite a bit more to "entertain" you ..and now I've found that, I might .. just might .. be able to find the other one. These were all painstakingly typed on my little portable typewriter ... the same one on which I typed my university thesis sitting in the front room of Tan y coed Isaf listening to Roy Harper and The incredible String Band. There was none of this " buying" of such things in those days .... getting somebody to write it for you. Oh no. Anyhow, now I've found the "proofs" of this one, I'm going to print out a few copies to entertain my friends ... so the print run is a maximum of 2. I doubt if they'll sell out. Especially as they're free. ..and now .... here IS The Incredible String Band "doing" two remarkable songs .. "The Half-Remarkable Question" and " Painting Box" on the Julie Felix Show in about 1698 .... But the real ½-remarkable ? is ...where's the other 1 ?
Yesterday, or something like yesterday, there was some researcher or other bemoaning the decline of the Puffin. She worked on some island or other, and surveyed them. About 8 years ago there were, let's say, 8000 of them. That was a big increase on the previous survey ... let's say, 5000 -ish. And now they've done another one. Why did they wait 8 years ? Who knows ? They were shocked to find that they hadn't increased ! They might even have gone down !! The lady I spoke of earlier was flabbergasted and hornswoggled !!! It's odd, is it not, that these "experts" don't seem to understand that populations can indeed go down as well as up. There's a thing called predator-prey interaction graphs, where the numbers of each rise and fall .... there's lots of prey, so the predators thrive, which reduced prey numbers, so then the predators don't do well for a while, and that leads to an increase in the prey species again, and up and down they go. Here's a nice gentleman explaining it all ..... Then, of course, there's all sorts of other factors that can have an effect on population size. For a start, large concentrations of any organism can facilitate the rapid spread of disease. Then there's also the increased competition for food in large colonies. And that food source can itself undergo cyclical booms and busts. Sometimes part of an overpopulated species will just bog off somewhere else. I know I would. And here's another thing. No mention was made of any other species on the island. There might well be other colonial seabirds there ... Manxies, Fulmars .... etc. Are they monitoring those as well ? I wonder how they are doing. Oh, I forgot .... they're not "comical" or "colourful". And ..oh no ... visitors might not be able to get close to them. That's no good is it ? No. Nobody gives a flying fart about them. I suppose she thought, in a Utopian sort of way, that the Puffin population would just keep going up and up and up and up , with the Puffins eventually ganging up and eating the tourists and rubberneckers and nature lovers, and their pesky noisy children. And the researchers who study them. Now that would set up another predator-prey cycle ! And now, for no proper reason I can think of, we have the Chameleons and " Up the down Escalator, an anthemic song if ever there was one. I've seen them a few times ... they were probably partly responsible for my current inability to hear blasted Treecreepers etc. And it's got the words as well .... so, you've got to sing along with it. It's the law. Another bulletin has come in from Elric Hardly, one of the few "proper" all-round "naturalists" probably in the whole world. Who can forget his unforgettable broadcasts on Radio Liverpool, each lasting 7 hours without a full stop ? Who, I ask myself, could top his discovery of a new Rotifer for Skelmersdale, Lancashire, England, The UK and the World, Tergiraptus hardliensis ? Anyway, here it is .... in all its glory. Well, unlike all those jumped-up professors and so-called experts, I've been out all night on my specially-equipped bicycle collecting bat droppings from every 1km square with 30 miles of my house, which of course I very rarely actually live in what with all my important work , not only with bats, anyway, I of course had my portable microscope with me in the shopping basket ( no doubt invented by mega-corporations to tempt the run-down workers to spend more and more) and now, by the dawn sunshine,I'm having a look through them and identifying all the microbial life within them, which by and large have been neglected by mainstream " scientists" with their degrees handed to them on a plate in the rotten so-called education system where anyone can get qualified armed with only a marker pen and a text-book,and influential friends, obviously, and they will of course chuck the worn-out marker pen into the nearest water-course thereby inevitably causing the painful and drawn-out death for some poor hedgehog or stoat, which, incidentally, I have been surveying over the last 18 years and produced startling results which have been largely ignored by the "official channels" who are only interested in going on free jaunts abroad where they can lounge around at conferences and get off with manky women every night, which is a well-known fact, and I've found some very rare ones which my so-called "superiors" would never have found by looking out of the windows of their ivory towers and looking down at the subjugated masses toiling below like ants, which, by the way, I'm on the verge of a breakthrough with, having found out exactly how it is that they find their way back when they're so low down, and it's not scent trails as was previously thought, because I've tried to deceive them by applying powerful alternative scents on their trails which do not prevent them returning which has overturned the whole theory, well, it would have done if it had ever got published which of course it won't be what with reputations being at stake but I'm not bothered, the truth will out , the downtrodden will be restored to their rightful status, maybe, blimey, I've been getting through those microbial slides ,mind you, I've had to take refuge in an abandoned and rather smelly bus shelter which has slowed things down a bit, anyway, I've found a fine specimen of the fortunately rare Capitator megabosciensis, unknown north of Swindon up to now, as is clean drinking water, fair rents, ice cream and flushing toilets but I'm not going to rant on about all that, I'm straight off to Skelmersdale University which is the only place I'm allowed into with a laboratory at the moment, all because I got caught out in all this "Me Too" stuff when all I was doing was taking the opportunity to comb out a rare Flea species from this young lady's hair who was sitting in front of me on the University Bus, full of halfwits, drug addicts, dribbling fools and "Sports Students" and before I knew it I was carted off by the "Politically Correct Squad" and now Skem is my last resort, rather like Blackpool but without the so-called "fun" , hang on, here's the bus, hold on a mo mate I've got a bike to get on , oh, blast, I suppose I'll have to bike it there now, hang on, where's me microscope, you can't trust anybody these days,bloody peasants ...... [ The tape runs out at this point, which is indeed a great shame ...] And now, appropriately, here's "Time for Heroes" performed by Pete Doherty of The Libertines, with Neil Young's " Out on the Weekend" as well..... they both sort of "fit" Or should the title really be The Farce of Life ? This morning on't radio there was a bloke talking about the way different religious groups are busy killing each other all over the world .... and he was a bit irked about it. And he came up with an excellent metaphor about the way different religious groups should see themselves and others. Here's how he sees it .... it's like people going up a mountain .... and they all take a different path to get to the top. And as they get closer to the top, the view each group has as they near the summit gets more and more similar ...and when they get to the top, they all have the same view. And I thought .... are us lot in the "birding fraternity" ( hah!) like that ? Are all us robin-strokers, nature-lovers, birders, birdwatchers, twitchers, back-garden bird-feeders etc just on different paths leading to the same thing ? And if so, what is that "same thing" ? And while you're thinking about that, here's another of those " tick celebrations" that I keep going on about ... Well. my opinion is ... up to a point, Lord Copper ! But I also think it's pretty likely that we all start off just as birdspotters, then we often go through a twitchy phase lasting about 20 years, then we realise the sheer futility of it all so we then become proper birders, and finally we end up as doddery old fools misidentifying everything and dribbling into our porridge. And probably, at that stage, we start writing a blog. Here's that song again re-imagined for those with blood still in their veins Yes, after yesterday's admissions of uselessness, here's something completely harmless to take our minds off the shambolic disaster of yesterday ! I can almost hear the laughter from here ! Anyway, this carries on from the " 14 questions" from a couple of posts ago ... [15] Grainy sound piece [8] [16] Fuel for bad weather [5,6] [17] Brag about [4] [18] Argument at a health resort [7] [19] Lick up before a sidepiece [7] [20] Rapid move [5] [21] Selection of a hill top [9] [22] Lady sailor. [4] [23] Blackpool has a large one of these [6] [24] Labour vote [7] [25] Blustery evening [11] [26] Wizard flyer [6] ..and don't forget the one in the title . There ... that wasn't too bad I hope . And this isn't too bad either .... Well, the good thing was, I "got" my "first Swift from the house" this morning, which was a fine thing. And yesterday I was also quite smug when I found out that The King of Bryher hadn't seen any Swifts at all yet, anywhere, whilst I had seen 2. So there. And now I've seen 3. Ha ! But all that was wiped out later this morning when I made an amazing and terrible identification error.Oh yes. How indeed are the mighty fallen ! There I was, binocular-less ( no urban binoculars for me ... the game is not worth the candle) when I spotted a bird. And I was puzzled as to what it was. Fair enough, the view wasn't too good, it was only a speck-sized thing and it didn't call, and I was sort of stumped. Anyway, the thing is, I got it wrong ... drastically wrong in fact. It was actually a totally different sort of bird to what I decided it was at the time. Luckily I was on my own ( except for the dog) so there was no-one to listen to my completely crap ID decision .... but I've been thinking about it all day. Glumly. So telling you lot ...all three of you .... about it might help a little bit. And I've got a head-full of rather weak excuses for my mistake. But it still hurts. But I shall comfort my shattered ego with the famous saying ... "The man who never makes a mistake will never make anything." Here's a lovely, sad song from Death Cab for Cutie So, to cheer myself up, I'm going to sing along to it a few times ... and so can you if you like. ... this is the bit where I'm expecting you to tell me that you've done much the same sort of thing and it is perfectly understandable so don't worry about it.
There's that comment box, and there's my email address ... [email protected] I'm waiting ! Here's a few Quiz-type Questions for you to work out .... plus the one in the title of course ... [1] Precious hill top [9] [2] Bone on its knees [6] [3] Sticks to the bottom you fool [8.5] [4] Grain husk and twelfth of a foot [9] [5] Land and Travel Fee [9] [6] Bevy before bedtime [8] [7] Struggling to get enough air [6] [8] A pebble and a gossip [9] [9] Gone mad [6] [10] Scottish musician in the Sahara [9] [11] What you might get if you annoy a dog [7] [12] Pastime [5] [13] The smile you get from fermented pears [9] [14] Act of theft [5] [15] Egg-born cashew [8] [16] Street decorations for bookworm. [4,7] What's going to be suitable music to go with that ? Well, I was going to have Klee's " Mein Geheimnis" but there were no good versions. So, we're having GZM instead with a fine tribute to Kevin Ayers in your actual Welsh ... ..... more of those questions are ,as they say, in the pipeline ...
In my totally knackered, battered and ancient copy of " A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe" by the esteemed Peterson, Mountford and Holland, 12th impression 1969, I found this annotation written by me ...... " swears more that churrs"....... and here's its counterpart for the Reed Warbler ... ignore the bottom bit about the Great Reed Warbler.. and in contrast to the above , the Reed " churrs more than swears " ... and what I want to know is .... where did I get that from ? It was a long long time ago. I've looked in a few obvious places where I might have got it from.... no luck. ( While I've been writing this I've been lookingupalot hoping to get that "first Swift from the house this year" but so far notgettingit.......) Maybe you might have seen that mnemonic too, and you might even remember where. Then you could make a little room in your busy schedule to tell me where it is ... [email protected] ..nifty link that ! So .... I'm counting Sparrows in my local area. In Zone A, 20% of the 40 Sparrows are females. And in Zone B, it's the other way round ... 40% of the 20 Sparrows are female. OK .... so I work out the actual number of females ..... Zone A ..... 20% of 40 = 8 females. Zone B....... 40% of 20 = 8 females. Crumbs ! But ...dear and astute reader ... should I be surprised ? Go on ...try a few for yourself and see ... you know you want to. Or is it too much of a Nutcracker for you ? Now .. the reason I've put that on here is because on " More or Less" on Radio 4 yesterday "they" were discussing all that .... and supposedly " clever" people were telling us listeners that they'd never heard of that before. Really? And they were discussing how they might go about proving it. I don't believe a word of that. It's bleeding obvious. But what use is it ? Well.... look at this. Suppose you have to work out 43% of 150 without a calculator. Much easier to work it out as 150% of 43 ! 100% of 43 = 43 50% of 43 = 21.5 150% of 43 = 64.5 much easier ! So there we have it. Oh .... and now an extra question .... what sort of Sparrows were they ? Why I've chosen this for today's music I don't know. But I have. |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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