Aha ! Exams !! Results !!! What a gaping chasm has opened up due to rampant grade inflation !!! But what's that got to do with us lowly birders ? Well ... there have been suggestions that some sort of "birding exams" might be a good idea. Sending in your sighting of a Pallid Swift might be accepted rapidly if you've got A** in your Ornithology A Levels ! Aha ! And as it happens, I've actually made up an exam or two on here. And here's the links to them ...... -190-flintshire-bid-clubs-latest-exam-results.html 190-a-leaked-flintshire-bird-club-exam-paper.html 514-the-great-exam-swindle.html I've also got a "Lee Evans" exam in the pipeline ..... endless amusement there . ( Interestingly, a high-up in Bozzo's little clique of over-privileged gormless shits was on't TV and he was asked about his A-level grades ... and he pretended he couldn't remember them.) ( Oh dear oh dear.) So ..there we are then, going to Hell in a hand-cart. Bring on the remarkably relevant music .....
0 Comments
That's Pickles up on top of the sofa, and Ginger is the one lounging about on the settee. Pickles is the mother of Ginger. They were most unusual in one way..... They would look at the garden from the back steps, often watching the sparrows etc intently ..but ... they never chased them. They just watched. I suspect that is not the norm for the feline population. But sadly, Pickles died this morning. Over the last month fur started falling out in big chunks, she had sore patches all over the place, then lost her appetite and therefore got skinnier, and became much more withdrawn. Over that month there were many trips to the vets, but after many vet-visits, lots of time and tests and money they never managed to work out what was wrong. But now, today's challenge ....... well two actually ... [a] How many UK birds include a colour in their Latin name ? eg ...... Red-eyed Vireo .... Vireo olivaceus [b] How many have a sound in their Latin name ... ? eg .... Corncrake Crex crex That'll keep you out of mischief for a while. Here's a bit of partly-relevant music ... Dark Days Well.... yesterday whilst rummaging about in my "office" I found an absolutely ancient copy of the" RSPB Birdwatcher's Field Lists" .. a slim, pocket-sized volume. There's ten lists in it, and I've filled all ten of them in .... there's a 1982 list (!), a 1983 list (!!), a House List ( 1982 and '83 and '84) , a Life List, an Ireland List ('83 & '84), one for birds I've ringed, and a 1986 list broken down into 2-month-chunks. But the one that really caught my eye was the " Dead Birds" list. I don't know what the time-period was to amass the list .... Here it is ..... Fulmar Gannet Cormorant Grey Heron Mallard Teal Shelduck Canada Goose Pheasant Moorhen Oystercatcher Lapwing Curlew Gt. Black-backed Gull Lesser Black-backed Gull (Scandinavian Lesser Black-backed Gull) Black-headed Gull Kittiwake Razorbill Guillemot Little Owl Rook Jackdaw Magpie Jay Blue Tit Blackbird Robin Starling Greenfinch Redpoll House Sparrow. I wonder how many birdwatchers still have their copy of that little book of lists. And does the RSPB have an updated version ??? I know not. Let's have a bit of music then ...... Transatlanticism .. Death Cab for Cutie ..terrific !!! Over the years I've come across quite a few crap bird books ... and I've written about some of them on here...... ..... they're often much more "interesting" in some ways ... 642-the-worst-bird-book-in-the-universe.html 644-the-worst-bird-book-in-the-universe-part-2.html 659-the-worst-foreign-bird-guide.html 665-the-worst-nature-newspaper-column.html ( OK, its not a book) 715-the-worst-world-tick-fest-book.html But the strange thing is, most books about other creatures are excellent. And the smaller those creatures get, the better the books about them .... I've got terrific books about woodlice, butterflies, beetles, hoverflies .... crikey... If YOU have a really crap bird book that I haven't come across, I'd love to put it on here ... if only to protect other birders from buying it ... a comment would do it, or a message on [email protected] ..... a tiny good thing to do in a wicked world. But now, 'tis Music Time ..... Bat for Lashes .... I hope you've all got a copy of this excellent book .... ..... but surely it is time for a new collection .... there's been plenty of time since 1996 when it was published. And that's not the only book that's worthy of an excellent sequel . What about those two " Coot and Corncrake" (Chris Harbard) books .. there's plenty of potential for some new stories in those. And why not Bill Oddie's BIG black bird book ? There's that Kaufman who wrote his epic " Kingbird Highway" a sort of low-budget "Big Year Bird Race" round America ... surely there's a huge market for follow-ups ... " Trump's Twitching Tricksy Ticks" is an obvious best-seller for a start. " Twitching with the Taliban" is another obvious volume , then there's "The Charm of Birds" ( Viscount Grey of Fallodon) (which really needs a kick up the arse) but could lead to even posher books such as " In-Spired Birding" by the Archbishop of Oxpecker, or " Boris's Big Bird Book and/or "Maggie Thatcher Tick Snatcher" ... all would be mega-sellers. That Simon Barnes wrote " How to be a bad birdwatcher" ..... But surely he should try to help bad birdwatchers to be better ... there's a whole series to be written ... How to be a not so bad birdwatcher How to be a so-and-so sort of birdwatcher How to be reasonably good birdwatcher How to be an above- average birdwatcher How to be good birdwatcher How to be an ornithologist How to be an ex-birdwatcher and do something useful instead. There's a whole new world of brilliant follow-ups to be written. But now it is music time. I'm not going to apologise for putting it on here again ... but it is beautiful and sad at the same time ........ as is life itself. Right at the back of Bill Oddie's " Gripping Yarns"( highly recommended) he has written about his " Bird Dream List".... and the difficulties he has had with it . For a start, he doesn't have any dreams ... but he actually does, but he didn't remember any of them. BUT ...he then became a "guinea pig" on a BBC science programme about ... er... dreams. They stuck electrodes all over his bonce and they assured him there was plenty of things going on inside it dreamwise. He was assured that " everyone has dreams" ... and sure enough, he does remember (some) of them nowadays. They come in different categories .... e.g........ missing out on Little Brown Jobs. a rarity is up the road, but the car keys have gone a huge fall of Bluethroats at Bartley Res. he's witnessing a big fall , but he can't ID any of them. And as for me, I've written about mine on here ..... 255-the-dream-list.html 270-dream-list-update.html ... not that there's many ...... but ...here's a possibly relevant song .... " A day of dreams" Why indeed ? In Bill Oddie's excellent book " Gripping Yarns" he has a whole chapter about it . Its an excellent book by the way.... as are his others. Yes, yes, I know some people don't think much of him, but I'm not one of them. I'm a fan. ( It's the one on the left, by the way ) Many years ago, at Wonderful Windy Whitley Bay, I was strolling along the tideline, and lo & behold, there , dead as a doornail, was a Little Auk. Crikey ! At that time I'd never seen one. And I bloody well ticked it. And I'm glad I did, because many many years went by before I saw another one. Bill has made up his own rules about TDB ... Ticking Dead Birds .... [1] He had to find them himself. [2] He draws the line at birds found in dustbins. [3] It's OK if you're the first to identify it. He was tempted at times ...such as ... [1] His first Sooty Shearwater was actually just one wing on a tideline. [2] He ticked a dead Gt. Reed Warbler in a rhubarb patch on Out Skerries. In both cases he had an excuse ... he was very young at the time. Anyway, as for me, I have to confess that I ticked a dead Tree Sparrow I found under a hedge by the underpass on the Low Road between Dalton-in-Furness and Barrow. And yes, I ticked it. It's OK though, it was only A "Local Patch" tick. A dilemma crops up if you're doing some sort of survey ...... if it is still warm, you can probably count it as a " bird within your survey area" ...but what if it is a Great Northern Diver deep inside a wood in Coventry ? Or a White's Thrush floating in a pond in Warrington ? Anyhow, I'd tick'em ! Meanwhile, a song ........ and a bit further down, something similar.... Here's a tiny selection of "dead birds wot I found/drew" ..... Here's a video to compare and contrast with the Dylan one ... |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
|