For today's line-up of the top 5 recent academic papers on Ornithological Matters, I've managed to get the various authors and their friends and enemies to a photo-shoot especially for this blog. Unfortunately, they all are deadly rivals, and this was, as happens every year,the outcome, and this was the best snap I could get in the circumstances...... * I like to keep up with all the latest Stodginorthical Rescorch Parpers, and I've thoughtfully picked out the pick of the bunch for all 3¾ of my faithful readers to read. Here's my current Top 5 ..... [1] Stick, A and Carrot, C. ( They're the two males holding onto the stick)* University of The Modern Age, Tumbleweed Junction, Connecticut. TITLE : Do birds count, and if so, what up to ? [ International Synopsis of Short but Tricky Questions, February 2019]* [2] Stubbins, F.Q., Gubbins, Q. and Stremlington, L. (Laura Stremlington is the one on the phone. ) Stinkbone Academy of Tricky Stuff, Lower Stinkbone, Stinkbone County, USA. TITLE : We know there are many many species of birds that eat fish, but are there any species of fish that eat birds ? A 5-year global study based on lots of flying round the globe, staying in posh hotels and "encountering" lots of manky women. [ Bulletin of 5-Year Global Studies, a yearly Synopsis, July 2019] [3] Stick, A and Carrot, C. ( It's the same two still holding that stick) TITLE: Why do penguins incubate their eggs on a giant ice-sheet? Why would any living creature do that ? Including 4 photographs, 18 paragraphs and 27 graphs, all autographed. I mean, we know evolution is blind, but is it stupid as well ? [ Annual Bulletin of the 78th International Ornithology Procrastination* Forum. 2018] [4] Riskit, Y. and Stuffit, U. ( They're the two right at the top with the silly hats) TITLE: Are bird surveys actually harming bird populations? If so,do they harm the ones "they" see, or the ones they don't "see."? And if they don't, why not ? [The Journal of Avian Hypotheses and Counter-Hypotheses, August 2019] [5] Fernsteueren, H. ( You can just see the top of his head + eyes and eyebrows,in the doorway on the left.)( Nobody likes him, so they're trying to keep him out.)( It's because many of his colleagues think he is a machine of some kind,run by remote control by the Russians.)( They've never found any proof though)( He is a bit creepy) ( They call him Dr. Worm!). TITLE: If Warblers warble, why don't Nuthatches hatch nuts ? A hierarchical analysis of a non- descriptive/semi-topographical multi- dichotomical study of Avian Nomenclatural Contradictions. [ Bird-Lover's Weekly*, 17th July 2019 ] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, there's a few of your evenings used up ! Remember, experience is cheap at any price. But now, the "relevant music spot" ... TMBG ... " Dr Worm" * They might be holding a carrot as well.... it really was quite hard to tell.
* It's the shrt qustns that are indeed the trickiest .... such as " is there such a thing as nothing" and " if the Universe is expanding, what is it expanding into ?" * I keep forgetting to "look up" what procrastination means, but I never seem to get round to it. * Written, I believe, by one of Severe Benson's many descendants , Basher Benson. There's more of "that sort of thing" on the distal end of this lovely link .. 254-the-best-bits.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Using skill and judgement, can you work out what this bird is ? It is indeed on the British list. And it has had various mentions on here as well. So it should be no problem at all. Assuming, that is, that you possess the aforementioned skill and judgement. I hope you are applying your entire intellect to the task. It's for you ( c'est pour toi) to work out. But if you can't, why not listen to this instead ..... ? C'est pour toi que je trace
C'est pour toi que j'ecris Ces quelques lignes force je m'enlise, je drive Pourquoi faut-il tant d'amour Pour vivre Moi je veux des histoires Oh oui moi je veux faire des jaloux Toutes ces choses Pour te rendre fou Oh oui j'aimerais Te voir à genoux C'est pour toi que j'écume Ces sales endroits O les coeurs se vident Un jour J'y prendrais place Surement Il me faut tellement D'amour pour vivre Moi je veux faire des histoires Oh oui moi je veux Faire des jaloux Celles qui durent Celles qui poussent a bout Oh oui j'aimerais Nous voir à genoux à genoux Nous pousser jusqu'au bout à genoux If you're stuck with that bird up there, the answer is on the far end of this link .... it will send you back through this blog about a year, where I planted the answer as part of my cunning plan ! 231-birds-are-not-nuisances.html So, I arrived at the "pools" which apparently held a good mixture of waders, including Curlew Sands, Greenshanks, Dunlins, etc. I sat down amongst the thronglet, and started to have a scanlet through them. But then it got interesting .............. A " knowledgeable" person started telling "us" what the various birds were. He started off well by identifying a group of Greenshanks as Curlew Sandpipers. There is a BIG CLUE in the name Curlew Sandpiper. Having done that, he then went on to tell us that the Curlew Sandpipers were Dunlins. That was all intriguing ..... what would be next ? My bet was on him identifying the Dunlins as Little Stints. It fits the sequence quite nicely. I was really excited at the prospect. Gripping stuff ! Where was all this lunacy going to end ? There were quite a few dragonflies about..... .... maybe he will inform us that they're hummingbirds. But ...some interfering spoilsport then pointed out that the " Curlew Sandpipers" were in fact Greenshanks. [I was a bit miffed about that, as I was enjoying it all. Sometimes the truth can be a bit boring, compared to the exciting world of delusional fantasy, which could never happen in real world of politics or The Johnson/Trump Fact Pact.] You could almost hear the shifting of mental gears at this seismic reappraisal.. ... and there was a great gnashing of teeth throughout Mesopotamia ! Then the " knowledgeable person" told us that the Curlew Sandpipers were Curlew Sandpipers ... a real breakthrough. That 1st mistake set in motion a sort of "Size Domino Effect" .... ...... Snipe becomes Jack Snipe. ........ Gt. Spot becomes Lesser Spot. ........ Gt. White Egret becomes Little Egret ......... Eagle becomes Sparrowhawk. ........... Magpie decomes Dipper .......... and X becomes X - 3 Here's some further examples of BIG and small ... Mind you, I once mistook a naked man for a Flamingo !
To be fair, he was a long long l o n g way away. You can read about my calamitous cock-up here ... 133-the-loch-erne-mystery-bird.html We all know how farmers are dead keen to have those " wild borders" around their fields these days, to encourage insects and birds ...... but most of the ones I've seen have been pretty narrow . Just a "token" attempt really .... better than nothing, of course, but " could do better." So, I'm proposing that the policy should be to have wider strips around these fields, in fact, half of the area of the field should be "wilded", leaving the other half as a rectangle inside for crops. Let's have a look at a 400m x 720m rectangular field as an example This diagram shows you a 40m-wide " wild" strip all the way round it. But it's too narrow ..... it's supposed to use up half the area of the field. ..and this one below shows you a 160m-wide strip that's way too big. .. only 1/9 th of the field has crops in it ! But what we want is that " half crops half wild" situation. So the strip needs to be somewhere between 40m wide and 160m wide. Right then .... question time .. [ A] For that field up there, what is the "correct" width of the "wild" strip which will make the "border" and the "crop rectangle" have the same area ? ? [B] Can you find a "rule" that the farmer can use to work out the width of the strip for any size of rectangular field ? Don't work on it too late into the night ! Now here's " Zu Spät" which, by an incredible coincidence means " too late." This was in yesterday's paper .... ..... is this opening up the New Era of Birding ? s Probably not ! But I thought it was worth bringing it to your attention. What with all the other things clogging up the newspapers. And it has led to a short and punchy little post. In contrast to my usual torrent of words. So ... the "relevant music" ..... Is this the older, more Teutonic version of Elton John ? Probably not ! But I thought it was worth bringing to your attention. Don't worry folks ... I didn't need to throw the computer out of the window. Eventually, after centuries of struggle against a tsunami of misinformation I won ! They need a kick up the arse though, for all the farting about. But now, back to real life ................. Yesterday me and The Significant Otter were sitting outside our very own "Seaside Bar" in a bit of a cool breeze, when this battered butterfly flew past us and landed on the windowsill. (No, not that red one up at the top.) Business was brisk, as usual, but our talented and hard-working bar-person, Deirdre, was holding the fork. Sorry, fort. So I had time to creep up on it and take a snap. And there it is. OK readers ... what do you think it is ? I've narrowed it down to 2 candidates. But I'll let you have a go for yourselves. Here's a butterfly-related song while you're thinking about it. My sister took this picture. I was suitable impressed. It seems to have "The Necessary Dorsal Muscles" as well. Unlike me. And Wol. Oh yes ... I trundled along by the river again yesterday after my amazing "early sighting" of 2 (TWO!!) Common Gulls ...and stap me if there weren't two of them again ! Could they possibly be the very same two ? And talking of "two" ...... Here's two almost identical snaps of some of the assembled gulls . They were taken a few seconds apart ... can you spot the two bird-related dinky differences between the two snaps ? (It's just like those puzzles you used to get in the Beano) (for younger readers, it was a comic consisting of 90% fights and 10% setting the school alight.) ( remarkably similar to Everyday Life In "Wonderful" Widnes in many ways. ) I don't want you to spot the exciting and elusive answers yet, so they will appear after this amazing Common Gull Winter 2019-20 Count Graph and of course The Inevitable Music Spot .... Mind you, it won't be much of a graph, what with there only being two counts so far, and even more boringly, both of them were " 2", but it's a start. There it is then, In all its splendour ! So far things in the world of Common Gull graphs are pretty quiet. But ...who knows. Two years ago the winter arrival of CG's virtually collapsed to single figures over the whole winter period. Which is what got me started monitoring them. Last winter the numbers recovered to their normal levels . So ... who knows what might happen this winter ? Right ... time for the Crucial Cwiz Competition Count-up ... .....and points mean ...well not a lot actually. ....... but it is indeed the "taking part" that matters. .... well, I hope you did well. Here's how to score your efforts .. [a] The gull at the top right of the lower snap on the mud below a hefty boulder isn't there in the upper one. ( 5 pts) [b] The gull on the far left of the "Muddy Island In The Middle Of The River" ( "tmiitmotr" as it will be known hereafter) has its wings raised in the lower picture. ( 3 pts.) Right ... some suitable music is now about to appear ... but I'm hardly likely to find anything relevant to those 2 differences in the snaps and the two "2's" in the Common Gull counts .... no chance ! Hmmm ... I wonder if they've got a song called " tmiitmotr."
If the Universe is truly infinite in space and time, then everything that CAN happen WILL happen ... and it will happen an infinite number of times ... so there certainly would be rather a lot of occurrences of tmiitmotr . Which is oddly fine. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LATE NEWS .... our hub/router is getting duffer and duffer so we've got a "new" "improved" one .... but so far the instructions and advice and paperwork have been, to put it bluntly, SHITE. They have given us contradictory " ready" dates, wrong advice about the installation, vague and incomprehensible "prompts" on the screen .... which has only helped me to despise all management even more than I already do. They've told us we can set it up .. and then they tell us we can set it up in 24 hours. Or 48 hours. And then they tell us that a "man" has to come and sort out the box at the top of the road. And they tell us they will send us an email when it is ready. AND NONE OF THAT HAS HAPPENED. I mean, what do you do when you're installing the new device and a box with 17 inside it comes up on the screen ? 17. Meaningless ! SO .... I'm going to try again today .... and if it all goes wrong again I'm going to throw the bloody computer out of the window. So ..... we will see. Or not ...as the case may be. I found that book in a charity shop (50p) a few days ago .. a slim volume dating way way back to 1989. Having spent my teenage years in Widnes, a total dump of a slag heap, a book like that would have been useful. But it was too late for me..... I was gone by 1968 .... and so most of the places in it were unknown to me, or if they were known to me, I hadn't the means to get there. Plus, me and my dad (my only means of transport) had fallen out rather spectacularly, so he wouldn't have driven me anywhere anyway. Happy days ! Bah ! But I DID know about this one ... Hilbre Island.... ..... yes ... and the helpful write-up about it revealed a terrible fact. ... which was ... you were meant to get a permit to go there. ..... er ... what ? I seem to have never actually realised that. It also points out the various things you must and mustn't do to keep safe. Luckily, I have written about that sort of thing on here already.... 398-hilbre-100-ways-to-read-your-tide-table-wrongly.html That should sort everything out. One likes to help. In later life, still without "that book up there" I've been to many of the places in the book .... and seen a lot of brilliant birds in the process. Here's the excellent author, Ken Stoba and his friend ... he looks a bit worried in that picture, probably because he's realised that he has written it too late for me. I'll probably revisit that book ..at some point ...... the maps are smashing. But now, the music .... I mainly chose this because it has lots of birds in it . And it is performed by the excellent Lemonheads .... Yesterday I spotted this on the noticeboard at Grumbling Stumps .... I was most impressed with the ingenuity of whoever it was that subtly changed Ruff to Puff with a nifty bit of rubbing-out ! Yes, I'm a shallow old Hector. The Significant Otter often wishes that she could be as easily amused as me. Of course, there's lots of scope for "that sort of thing" ..... For a start, I was going to write about " Subtle Altercations" .. ... but some wag rubbed out the "c." ... and that served me onto a different theme entirely. ... hang on ... who's rubbed out the "w" in "swerved" ? .... could it be him ? Think of all the things that could go awry ...... by partial or total erasure ...
Beaded Tit Bitten Prambling Lack Tern Pullfinch Canal Goose Grey Lover One Curlew Hag Back-headed Gull Grey Fartridge Lady Amherst's Peasant Trek Sadpiper There must be billions more .... and one of them must be the silliest/rudest. Let the search begin ! There I was on Scilly trying to draw some nice plants, when a bloody great Wryneck got in the way and ruined the whole thing ... I don't like September... it marks the onset of crap weather, cold walks, rain, wind and sogginess for what seems like an endless series of long ,dreary months. OK ... I know the summer was a bit like that ... and, to be fair, Autumn is good for vismigging, except that I'm far too old and decrepit to wait around for hours in the freezing cold mornings trying to pick up a Meadow Pipit 2 miles above me. So... just for this day, I'm going to pretend it is still August, but I'm choosing the last day of August in 1980 bloody 7 ! On that day we all zipped along to Lytham Railway Station, where there was a 100+ strong throng of us Lancashire birders waiting to spot "the" Wryneck. Yes, I was a Lancashire Birder back then. Maurice Jones was there, The Boss of Blackpool-Based Birding, and as there was a lot of waiting going on, and waiting, and waiting, we spent a considerable amount of time admiring the beautiful young lady who was standing next to him on the other side of the platform. Maybe she was some relative of his, or a family friend or whatever .... she was indeed lovely. Of course, nobody actually used their telescopes or binoculars to look at her more closely, of course not, but whilst scanning for the still-not-having-turned-up-Wryneck some people might have accidentally had a glimpse. Anyway, then a fine, lovely and wonderfully strange thing happened! Not only did "the" Wryneck appear, it flew right along the platform above the massed crowd of nature-lovers, birdwatchers, tickers, twitchers and people who were actually waiting for an actual train, and almost, almost, nearly, close as anything, touch-and-go-but-not-quite landed on "The Boss of Blackpool-Based Birding's" head. !! Bah ! There was only a millimetre or so in it ! How about that ! Memorable or what ? In that "Big Diary" where I have noted all three of my Memorable Birding Moments, I simply wrote ... 31/8/87 Wryneck Lytham Station. I was terse in those days. It was a Terse Universe for all of erse back then. Or even Werse. The day before that,, I had "had" my second ever Woodchat Shrike .. again at Lytham. But not, regrettably, at the railway station. The only Egrets around in those days were the ones inside words like " regrettably." Which was regrettable. And now, the usual totally irrelevant music ..... |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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