Puzzles, Games, Crosswords .. they're all the rage in these lock-down days ... ... so, I just happen to have a some more of those vans... you know .... you're strolling through Hemel Hempstead High Street and you spot this ... ...and you spot a van with MRS emblazened on the side, and straight away you realize it's the "ghost" of Mediterranean Shearwater !! What ? What's going on ? Well , regular readers will know .... Mediterranean Shearwater M r S They're called "ghosts" because they're what's left when all the other letters have died and gone to the "otherworld" leaving a few "ghost" letters behind. If there was a bird called the Jammy Horsebird then MRS would indeed be its ghost. As would YED or MHOD or HID. Or even JAY ! Some of you might think "so what ?" But the thing is, you can " spot birds" when there aren't any .. like on the M1. ..just by finding vans and lorries with those logos on them ... sorted. So ...off we go then with a selection of vans ..some will be dead easy, some tricky, some maybe only do-able by visiting foreign climes, some, perhaps, impossible .... #1 = DCL ... Duck-billed Platypus is close, but unfortunately NOT a bird... Is Dickcissel on the Uk list ? Who cares ... it'll count. The world's your oyster .... Next one ... ACS ..... if it was dogs, you could have Dachsund ! But it isn't..... .. and now, HLS ... you could have Shelducks, except that plurals are invalid. ... I suppose you could have it if there was nowt else. This one has an obvious starter ... but you should always try to find more ... There's an obvious one for DAL too ... but I'm sure you can find others .. ...and now, 'tis ISS .... what a shame there's no such bird as the Misidentified Bustard ... so you'll just have find a real actual bird .... You're probably knackered by now, so this ( GT) is an easy one ... ... so, obviously, I'm expecting you to get quite a few species .... ... but this last one, for now, is a 4-letter affair ... ASDA ..... can you find any solutions ? After all that brainy-stuff ..... music ! What a surprise.... La Grande Sophie ...........
0 Comments
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 ?!*&$£"? Here's some descriptions of birds ... but not in the format you are used to. And before you ask, it's not knitting patterns ..... they're all common birds you will all be familiar with, so don't panic ... DON'T PANIC ! So ..here's the first one ... I must apologise for the slight blurring in places ..... I've put them there to simulate real-life bird-spotting when you can't keep your jellyscope quite still ...after all, that's real life for you .... ... and as for this one, you'll soon get used the that crucial phrase " de la taille" after a year or so ... ... there you are ... it's there as well .... it also seems to have a fancy for those posh chocolates ... " noisettes" ... Sainsbury's has them.... This next one has " jacassements bruyants" which should set you on the right track.... You'll obviously be sad when you realise that this is the last one ..... Well ... there we are then. New horizons, new horizons !!!! If you are one of those knits who DOES prefer to i/d birds using knitting patterns, here's the very thing you've always wanted at the far end of THIS link ... 805-a-tricky-id-problem.html That lot should keep you busy for several minutes. Obviously, in recent months we've not been able to whizz around the UK ticking stuff because it is " not essential." Rather vague, don't you think. But that's, er, Boris for you. In our little hovel that we call home, he is called " mini-trump" for some reason or other. But don't worry .... we can drive anywhere we like, anytime, with any number of people regardless of any medical conditions that might be a bit contentious/coronav-irish. .... because now, the government's chief advisor Dominant Grumblings has paved the way for us! There were so many other things he could have done to solve his domestic dilemma, what with his obscene money mountain etc, but he decided to help us birders out by blazing a trail which left the so-called " lockdown" in tatters and gave all us "plebs" who don't earn billions of pounds a minute for being obnoxious sociopaths a loophole the size of a galaxy to drive through in their fancy cars. So ... I've been drawing up my schedule based on the latest twitching news, and I've filled the car up with loads of provisions and I'm setting off on a mammoth tickfest around the country , only leaving room for Mr. G, who is devastated that he might not be able to whizz over to some sunny Greek island like what he usually does. The Significant Otter is all for it ... she's been stuck with me for what must have seemed like 844 years. And we won't have to bother if some of our "claims" of rare species are queried, we can just come up with some lame excuse ... maybe our eyesight was a bit dodgy that day ,so we couldn't quite get the full details about those vital primary projections, or which way round those albatrosses were holding their fish, but it won't affect our driving skills at all because we've been set an example by a selfish, jumped-up heap of shite.. Coo .. I feel a lot better now .... and hey, due to the drastic mishandling of the CV situation, petrol is now cheap as chips! Bonus. And now, having got things clear, we can have an uplifting bit of music .. It's about the letter D ... which of course stands for Dominic.. W is also featured ... and I think I know what that stands for as well. You might recall my attempt to get lots of data from you lot out in the real world about the number of species featured in the various editions of The Observer's Book of British Birds. And if you don't remember, here's wot I rote on post 868 ..... So ... here's another thing ... that copy was the 1952 version ,and had 236 species in it. But that other copy I've found, which wasn't mine either, has 226 . But unfortunately it is undated. Which is a pity, because I was going to draw a graph of the steady increase ( or decrease) in the number of species over the decades. And I know how you all love a graph. So .... dig out your copy/copies of TOBOBB and find out the year and the number of species it covers ... then send your vital data to me .... [email protected] , of, if you prefer, as a comment ... and then we can work out, for example, how many it should have in the 1993 edition, and how many it could be in 2050 or 3000 !!! If you were exceptionally keen, you could also tell me which species have been added. And any that have been slung onto the scrapheap. Vital stuff, as I'm sure you will all realise. We could even backtrack the graph and work out at what date in the past there were no British Birds for us Observers to Observe. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So .. here we go ... In the 1937 and 1945 editions there were 226 species. And in the 1963 and 1974 editions there were 243. Aha ! So know we can work out, roughly, when there were NO UK birds at all. First up, let's look at scenario A .... 1945 226sp 1963 243sp. That works out as a "decline rate" of 17 species per 18 years = 0.94 species per year. And that means, back-tracking from 1945, we would reach zero 240½ years back That's 1945 - 240½ = half-way through 1704 . So, in the 2nd half of 1704, there were no birds at all. Crikey !!! But if we take the scenario B ....... 1937 .... 226 sp 1974.... 243 sp That's a decline of 17 species in 37 years ... = a mere 0.46 species lost each year. So .. working back from that 1937 figure of 226, it would take about 491 years to = 0 And that gives us a "zero-species" date of 1937 - 491 = 1446. So we have a wide " no birds in the UK" scenario .... from 1446 to 1704. BUT ..don't worry too much.... [a] There's lots of massive flaws in my reasoning ! ( surely not ?) [b] Oh yes .... for a start, you might have noticed that TOBOBB doesn't live up to its title .. it doesn't actually have all of the UK's birds in it. [c] On the other hand, it does cover a vast percentage of the actual numbers of individual birds in the country. I wonder what that percentage would be ? I'm guessing 99 %. [d] There's the slight problem of UK authors/poets writing about lots of birds before those theoretical " zero-species"dates. [e] And painters painting them as well. Hmmm. [f] There's even recipe books in which they boil them etc. [g] Maybe I could get a better estimate by reading all those ancient books... [h] ... and studying all those paintings ... [i] ... and stained-glass windows... [j] .... and folk songs [k] .. and surnames ... Partridge, Seagull, Knott,Finch etc [l] ... and first names ... Robin, Martin, Jay,Heron ... and the rest. [m] ... sometimes both ... there must be a few Albert Ross's about. [n] .. it is, in fact, a lifetime's work. [oh !] ..but to give you a starting point, the ice ages would be a reasonable backstop. Crumbs ... it must be music time ... maybe we should have a song about birds ... OK .... The littlest birds ( sing the prettiest songs ) Well, I feel like an old hobo, I'm sad, lonesome and blue
I was fair as a summer's day, now the summer days are through You pass through places and places pass through you But you carry them with you on the soles of your travelers shoes Well, I love you so dearly, I love you so clearly I wake you up in the morning, so early just to tell you I got the wandering blues, I got the wandering blues And I'm going to quit these rambling ways One of these days soon, ooh And I sing, the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs And the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs Well, it's times like these I feel so small And wild like the rambling footsteps of a wandering child And I'm lonesome as a lonesome whippoorwill Singing these blues with a warble and a trill But I'm not too blue to fly, no I'm not too blue to fly 'Cause the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs And the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs But I love you so dearly, I love you so fearlessly I wake you up in the morning so early, just to tell you I've got the wandering blues, I've got the wandering blues And I don't want to leave you, I love you through and through Well, I left my baby, on a pretty blue train And I sang my songs to the cold and the rain And I had the wandering blues, and I sang those wandering blues And I'm gonna quit these rambling ways one of these Days soon, ooh And I sing, the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs And the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs And the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs Well, I don't care if the sun don't shine And I don't care if nothing is mine And I don't care if I'm nervous with you I'll do my loving in the wintertime I was reading a book last night, and there was a dinky section about " island dwarfism." Or rather, island dwarfism. The theory says that birds on small islands probably get smaller than their mainland counterparts due to limited resources .... and eventually they get so small that they can no longer interbreed successfully with the mainland population and have become a separate species. And there's also "island gigantism" ...yes, the birds get bigger, and this is "explained" by the idea that they are filling a vacant niche ... that niche being the one that large mammals aren't there to fill. Now that seems a bit a bit weak to me ... I can hear the sound of barrels being scraped. And as for the "dwarfism" explanation, surely if resources were scarce, some of them would die, and then the resources would be sufficient for the now smaller population. Plus ... what about all the other organisms on said island ... the woodlice, the rats, the pottos, the moles, the spiders .... do they get smaller/bigger ... and if not, why not? And what about all the lice and ticks on those birds ... do they get smaller/bigger too ? And then there's the problem of the island getting smaller .. which it probably is, what with all that heavy seawater and its payload of pebbles and old beer cans bashing against its shores for eternity. Thetruth is, thnigs are otfen a lot more coplicasticated than they seem. Right then ...music time .... oh, and it's complicated, some now and some later ... Well now .... let's see what you make of this ... a video collection of "Animals saving other animals." [1] For a start, what do you make of it all ? [2] What do zoologists think about it ? [3] Have you read the comments ? [4] Have you read " The Selfish Gene" ? [5] It proposes the idea that we are just carriers of our genes, we're there to ensure our genes survive ... that's all our bodies are here for ..... to protect those genes and perpetuate them. [6] ..and that leads to the idea that creatures will tend to protect creatures which closely resemble them .. it's a sign that they will have a high percentage of their genes, and are therefore worth protecting. [7] There's more " animals helping animals" videos ... make up your own mind about whether you want to watch them. [8] After all that scientific rigour (?) I have to admit that I "rescue" things ..... and not necessarily things that are anything like me. [9] Just yesterday I got a cat down from a tree it was stuck up. It seemed very distressed and was ripping off bits of bark and eating them. Here it is .. but can you spot the bird that's sharing the tree with it ? I rescue woodlice and spiders that get into the bath and are going to die ... and put them out in the garden ! I let flies etc out of the windows .... their built-in " go to the light" programming doesn't serve them well in a "window-infested" society. I do the same thing with wasps etc. I've done quite a bit of getting birds out of chimneys too. I pick up all sorts of plastic junk that can trap birds or that birds etc might try to swallow. I'm a drip, basically. But ...have you found that bird in that picture yet ? OK .... music time .... highly relevant actually .... That Chrisp Ack'em showed us his " Garden Birds to Spot" in a recent publication ... and here's some of them ..... ..all fairly reasonable so far ... but rather predictable and, dare I say it, boring, so far ... ..... he's still playing pretty safe .... .... and , of course, the Cheery Chaffinch ... So .. having seen those ... what do you think, using your skill and judgement ,might be coming up next ? If it helps, there's three more to come .. The answers will appear after the music ... and here it is .. Vetusta Morla .. " Los dias raros" .... yes, I know "dias" looks feminine, but it's one of those very rare "nouns ending in -a" that are masculine .... ¡Ábrelo!, ábrelo despacio Di qué ves; dime qué ves, si hay algo Un manantial breve y fugaz entre las manos Toca afinar, definir el trazo Sintonizar, reagrupar pedazos A mi colección de medallas y de arañazos Ya está aquí Quien lo vio bailar como un lazo en un ventilador Quién iba a decir Que sin carbón, no hay reyes magos Aún quedan vicios por perfeccionar en los días raros Nos destaparemos en la intimidad con la punta del zapato Ya está aquí Quien lo vio bailar como un lazo en un ventilador Quién iba a decir Que sin borrón, no hay trato El futuro Se vistió con el traje nuevo del emperador Quién iba a decir Que sin carbón, no hay reyes magos Nos quedan muchos más Regalos por abrir Monedas que al girar Descubran un perfil Que empieza en celofán Y acaba en eco Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh Oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh Oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh Oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh Oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh Oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh Oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Right then.... you've picked your " next three" I hope ... and here's "his" ... the second one is..... a bit further down ... Personally, I think they're pushing the boat out a bit there .... there's plenty of other more "relevant" and "likely" for the audience they are dealing with....Collared Dove, Greenfinch, Dunnock, House Martin, Starling ....... I'm sure you can add many more.
I'm just saying ! In the previous post I wrote about my two copies of The Observer's Book of British Birds .. .... and I wondered how the number of species in them increased over the years. ....... and which species were added at various stages ... ....... and I asked you to tell me the date and no. of species in your own copies. .... and in the meantime I'm finding some out myself ... I tracked some copies down on Amazon/E-bay etc ... here we go ... 1937 226 species 1945 still 226 sp 1952 no. of species unknown ! 1962-64 1974 243 species if you know, let me know ! 243 sp As for my two copies, unfortunately the assumed "earlier" one is undated .... but I've got off to a start by simply finding out what the "extra" species were. There were 10 of them. To please the eye of the beholder, I've done a 4 3 2 1 formation..... Little Auk Avocet Red-spotted Bluethroat Glaucous Gull Iceland Gull Marsh Harrier Great Shearwater Spotted Redshank Crested Tit Red Kite So ... I'd love to know what has happened through the 1980's plus. If anything has happened. Have they hit the buffers at 243 ? (It is an exciting number ...243 = 3x3x3x3x3 = 100000 in base 3 . Amazing !) Are they still being published ? And if so, why ?? So ... I need my readers to fill in the gaps in my data ..... that's you, by the way. And here's a question for you ... assuming that they're still going, what "new" birds would they be including ... and. perhaps, excluded . Dumped.... or maybe, furloughed. Now there's something to think about in these lock-down-stuck-indoors-times. And here's a tangentially-relevant spot of music... the first few seconds are a bit odd though ....... but on the plus side, it's got the words, so you lucky lot can sing along with Steely Dan. Wake up there ! It's The Observer's Book of British Birds. And that's Pontyclun ..... Well .... in my ongoing " Pyramid of Bird Books" search I found a second copy of TOBOBB I didn't know I had. One of them was the 1952 verson. And it was once owned by a certain Philip Jones, who lived in Pontyclun ..which literally means Bridge the Hip. Rather sadly, on the last, blank page he's pencilled this .. 182 80 43 34 Well, somebody has. Well, dear readers, I looked at those pages ..who wouldn't ? On page 34 he's written FEMALE And page 43 has March 1, 1962 M,F ( Chaffinch) Llandod (House Sparrow) MALE June 4th Llandod June 5th Page 80 has ... Llandod (Mistle Thrush) Nest with Babies June 5th. And on page 182 ( Black-headed Gull) he has written ( in biro ) March 1st 1962 Well ! Was that it then ? Did his ornithological obsession shrivel and wither with adolescence looming ? Or did he get a much better book for his next birthday, and write his sightings in that instead ? Or did he suddenly realise the existential pointlessness of existence and get a job in insurance ? So ... here's another thing ... that copy was the 1952 version ,and had 236 species in it. But that other copy I've found, which wasn't mine either, has 226 . But unfortunately it is undated. Which is a pity, because I was going to draw a graph of the steady increase ( or decrease) in the number of species over the decades. And I know how you all love a graph. So .... dig out your copy/copies of TOBOBB and find out the year and the number of species it covers ... then send your vital data to me .... [email protected] , of, if you prefer, as a comment ... and then we can work out, for example, how many it should have in the 1993 edition, and how many it could be in 2050 or 3000 !!! If you were exceptionally keen, you could also tell me which species have been added. And any that have been slung onto the scrapheap. Vital stuff, as I'm sure you will all realise. We could even backtrack the graph and work out at what date in the past there were no British Birds for us Observers to Observe. This is vital research ( obviously) so I'm relying on you ... yes, YOU. We need to be mathematically safe. And I'm not just sitting here doing nowt either. I'm going to try to find MY actual copy which I bought in the upstairs section of Boots the Chemist in sunny Newark, Notts in approx 1960-ish. Now .. the incredibly appropriate "music" .... |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
|