This fell out of a book yesterday ... it must be at least 25 years old. Like me. It's also rather creased and crumpled .... like me. ... my daughter, when she was at secondary school, had to do some sort of homework, I think, doing a "shape poem", or something similar, but I finished up doing it, and this was the rough version. Here's it is written out properly ... I roam the seas with feet of rubber I feed on scraps of crabs and blubber eyes have I none, nowhere to go I heed the ocean's ebb and flow. A thousand razor teeth have I a thousand tiny feet to pry and preen, and all unseen I to and fro on foaming dream. Colder than stars, nor like a fish I have no will, nor any wish - you humans know me by this term - echinoderm, echinoderm. As you can see, I took myself much more seriously in those days.... didn't we all ? Did it get a decent mark ? I've no idea. I'm not even at all sure she handed it in. Such is the transience of fatherhood ! But I do think that "gannet" poem I put on here a while back is a sort of distant cousin to that one ... it's got the same sort of feel to it, but it's a deliberate "fake" poem , ascribed to a non-existent "author", Geraldine Harkness-Green, in an attempt to prove that "all bird poetry is crap." In that regard, it did its job I reckon. Here it is .... 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. ...and, they've both got 12 lines ... wooo ! And now, here's a beautiful Wir sind Helden song about being under the sea .... and it's a word video so you can sing along to it ... an "Echolot" in German = an echo-sounder, a sort of beacon .... and she likens it to a heart..... [Strophe I:] Halt still, das Bett ist ein Floß und ich Will raus auf's Meer, komm schneid es los Schau, unter uns flüssiges Blei Graue Schatten ziehen träge vorbei [Bridge:] Sterne und Wasser Und wir dazwischen Komm, wir schwimmen Mit den großen Fischen [Chorus:] Ich seh dein Herz, dein Echolot Schlägt Wellen in die See Ich seh dein Herz, ich weiß wir gehen Tiefer auf den Grund [Strophe II:] Komm schau, um uns tanzt glitzernder Staub Wir sinken selig und taub Stumm wartend und leise Ziehen Schatten engere Kreise [Bridge:] Sterne und Wasser Und wir dazwischen Komm, wir schwimmen Mit den großen Fischen [Chorus:] Ich seh dein Herz, dein Echolot Schlägt Wellen in die See Ich seh dein Herz, das bisschen rot Tut nicht lange weh [Outro:] Ich seh dein Herz, bleib noch nicht stehen Ich häng an deinem Mund Ich seh dein Herz, ich weiß wir gehen Tiefer auf den Grund And here's a thing ... completely unrelated to any of that.. half an hour ago I thought of a solution to 98% of the Irish border problem. Maybe 99%.
Here's what you do ... The vast majority of all those lorries going over the border will be carrying the same stuff every week... lorries full of cabbages, lorries full of spanners, lorries full of fish, lorries full of crisps, lorries full of ping-pong balls etc. There's be maybe 784 different sorts of consignments going through. Eek. So what you do is, you put a mix of all of that in one lorry. A box of ping-pong balls, 3 boxes of cabbages, 12 boxes of crisps, 20 spanners, 2 cases of fish. And the same in the next one. And the next one. And the next one ... and all those lorries will have a big number on them, 5 for example. Only one of those "5"s will need to be checked. The others can go through, because they're all the same inside. There might be the odd one checked at random just to make sure there's no skulduggery going on. There might be other sorts of mixes. A "3" might have a standard "mix" of balls of string, cakes, wardrobes, bibles, woolly jumpers and ski-poles. They'd only need to stop one of them. Once the system was embedded, maybe only 1 a week. Or one a month. Of course, there's be the odd, non-standard one-off sort of lorry carrying, maybe, a consignment of live sharks, or 27 Jum-Jum trees, or starfish, or 8000 pointed hats , wizards for the use of. They'd have to be inspected. But there won't be many of them. Once the system got going they might only have to check, say, 12 lorries a day ... no big deal. Now I'm not wanting anything for this terrific idea. I'm just saying. And if it does the job, they can have the idea free of charge. I'm a generous, if rather peculiar, old Hector ! Later .... you won't believe this, but it's true .... after writing about that consignment of pointy hats ( witches for the use of), when I logged out, an advert popped up featuring a rather alluring young lady wearing a witch's pointy hat. So, naturally, I saved it, intending to stick it on here.... but eerily, it didn't save... oooooh ! So I've substituted something similar. It did happen.... would I lie to you ?
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Here's a couple of silly things to brighten up your day .... because ... [1] Look what happens if you move RSPB up the alphabet ... TURD STQC RSPB I I was remarkably chuffed when I did that ! And it's only 2 rungs up the ladder !!!!! Surely somebody must have found that out before. Ho-ho [2] Now let's add to the merriment by moving the Merseyside Naturalist's Association ( MNA) just 1 ( one) measly place up the alphabet .. NOB MNA ..who says schoolboy humour is puerile ? Maybe your local bird association might do the same sort of thing. Start zooming up the alphabet now. You've got 25 chances of finding something. But maybe it's the sort of thing you'll only find once in a lifetime..... Early trip down to the Flood this morning ... bitterly cold ... but on the plus side, a Green Sand, 2 Snipes .... not a common sight there these days .... but absolutely nothing doing in the sky ... not even any Skylarks, which have been trickling through over the last few days. But not much else birdingwise got done today ... nor for the past few days .... because The Significant Otter had other plans ... she wanted a room full of clutter and junk to be totally rearranged, all the furniture moved a bit to the left ( or right) , "revealed" bits of wall to be repainted, some of the "junk" to be taken to the tip, some of it put somewhere else, and some of it also moved a bit the the R or L. And I had to do it all. All of it. The lot.The good news is, it's almost done .... So, in the absence of much bird news, I'm going to tell you about my "dream list." For most people, a dream list is a list of things they want to do or have. But mine isn't. Mine is, literally, a list of birds that have appeared in my dreams. It all started with a very vivid dream I had years ago featuring a flock of Bee-eaters. I thought to myself.... this is worthy of listing. It's a very cheap and effortless list to keep ... that might be important to you. That picture at the top is only partly Bee-eater. It's that Spring Crosby contraption that appeared in the very 2nd post ... and it is a nifty hybrid of various bits of birds stuck together. My plan was to get it put into a field guide.... I'm certain sure that people would start seeing it and reporting it. A brilliant "natural experiment." Back to that dream list now ... The only snag is, I very (very) rarely remember my dreams. I know I must have them, because "they" say we all do. So, my dream list is very small. Very very small. At least it saves ink. And time. And paper. So ... here's the (annotated) "dream list" ... ... we all like annotations, do we not ? [ Yes, we do ] ... Get ready to be severely underwhelmed . [ we're ready ] [1] Bee-eater .... several of them actually ... all in the one dream. [2] Redleg Partridge + Black Stork ... yes, both in the same dream. No idea how. [3] Spoonbill. .. it flew over the canal with 2 Cormorants ! In the dream, that is. [4] Hobby. Sitting on a branch low down in a tree. And that's it ...6 species, a pretty duff collection. Over about 20 years. But I did warn you that I hardly ever remember my dreams .... and obviously, not many of them are about birds. They're mostly a jumble of rubbish. But ... I'm sure some of you out there have got much better "dream bird" lists than that. And I just know deep down that you want to tell me about them . Someone somewhere will have a good one ... or a rubbish one. I don't care. It's the process that counts, not the result ... and now, remarkably , here's The Wannadies with "Someone Somewhere. " !! Nifty eh ? Every flaming month there's more and more ornithological research papers appearing in the scientific journals, so many that you need people like me to pick out the best ones for you to read ..... and by "people like me" I mean big-headed halfwits who are, basically, deep down, just trying to think of something to write about. So here we go then .... I've read them all... so here's my Top 10 Best Reads ... and why 10 ? Because the rest were right boring ! [1] Gannet, A. and Nuthatch, E : Is nominative determinism getting rarer ? Avian Review, August 2018, p7 -23. [2] Darringer, P.C., Normanton, C.P.A, Harmetoff, R.E., Anstadter, G.H., Cape, W.R., Witzend, A.N.,Stappenworte, D.V.: Are too many avian researchers writing too much too often? Yearly Review of Avian Research, 2017 vol 523, p 231-548. [3] Slopbucket,A, Bogbrush,Y. Why do big birds nest on small islands? An overview of recent studies. Big Birds, Feb 2018, pp 313-247. [4] Craven, C.F.C. and Cottidge, V., Are all top birders tiny ? The semiotics of size versus skill in the birding hierarchy . Tidschrift fur Scheiss 2018 vol17 pp 306-742. [5] Darling, P.M. and Thorogood, C. Juvenile migration strategies in hirundines, a "random walk" analysis compared to a Markov Chain approach. Journal of Applied Psychopathematics, July 2018, pp 6-18. [6] Harris, A. and Tweedie, M. The Spring Crosby effect : how a "fake bird" deluded large numbers of UK birders and the subsequent consequences: a review with recommendations to the BBRC . Studies in Delusional States and Societal Norms, June 2018, special volume. [7] Dumbledorsby, G and Hattenburrow, C. How come all those experts, who tell us that there's enough for a lifetime of study in the average back garden, bugger off to distant exotic climes when they want to make a nature documentary? Annual Bulletin of the Widnesian Institute of Vague Studies and Passable Exams, pp176 - 214 [8] Papp, C and Krappmeister, W.W. Genetic Drift" in the Fair Isle community: a long-term study in an isolated population, focusing on its unlikely obsession with knitting, folk-dancing and hanging around on a deserted airfield. Winstonian College Psychogenetic Review, August 2018, pp 844-1076. [9] Fringe, E.E . Do conservationists conserve the right things ? Or, should they be destroying housing estates full of Blue Tits to create reed-beds with remarkably few Bitterns ? The Journal of Futility, February 2018 pp 77-85. [10] Semblance, R.E. and Nuance,M. Should birders be recording what they don't see rather than what they do ? Digest of Controversy, March 2018, pp15-41. To complement the "strangeness" of some of those papers, here's Joanna Newsom singing " Yarn and Glue" a capella in what seems to be a church hall or similar in 2004 .... 14 years ago . A gutsy performance ! And amazing words too. Do you know what this is, son?
This is the Panopticon And all around us blink the brash And shifty eyes of common cash So do we die or do we travel Down the path by which one dabbles In the arts of antediluvian crafts With yarn and glue? So gather twilight to your breast And couch the rabble-rouser's nest And we will take a day of rest And we will all be heaven-blessed And we will gather round to dine And pass the time with wicked rhymes And toast in dandelion wines To hear their mellifluous chimes We toast the fallow furrows that we sow And we toast the monies that we owe, owe, owe And we toast the creditors we daily face Who topple down with gruesome grace And we toast the aristocrats with blood of blue 'Cause we know that our collars are that color, too And we toast the artisans of antediluvian crafts With yarn and glue We do, we do. I'm typing this at 7:40 pm with a female Tawny Owl calling away like mad out in the back somewhere .... a very welcome development in a largely Owl-free season. There's also been a Gt. Spot and a Bullfinch in the garden, and several flocks of seemingly disorientated pinkfeet going over. Plus, a gloriously colourful sunset. Wooo ! Simple Stuff. Here's the Man Booker Prizewinner 2018 .... Anna Burns and "Milkman" That's a rubbish title for a book, by the way. Well, it's "very experimental" ... it's got characters with no names, I seem to remember hearing that it hasn't got any paragraphs ,it's rather weird .... in a "Tristram Shandy" sort of rambling way. And anyway, all that "experimental" stuff has been done before. Haven't any of these reviewers read "La vie, mode d'emploi" or "La Disparition" or "The Pooh Perplex" or .. hang on, 20 Pinks have just flown over the attic, N. There's been 3 previous flocks so far this morning, 500+ NW, then about 200 E, and another 100 or so E as well... I suspect they're all the same ones milling about. ... as I was saying, or Martin Amis' "Time's Arrow" or for that matter, Raymond Queneau's "Exercices de Style." ? But all we want to know is ... has it got any blasted birds in it ? At all ? Is there an index ? That's another thing I want to know. Then, before we bought it, we could look in the index to see if there were any blasted birds in it. And never mind all this "set in "The Troubles"" stuff. I've been there and done that through all "The Troubles" ... and still got lots of birding done. I didn't wallow around in my own pool of misery. I just got on with spotting Iceland Gulls and Ring-billed Gulls and the like. Gulls, mainly.And Waxwings. And that "flamingo" that wasn't. Eek. Blimey ! So ...we're all agreed then ... no index, probably no birds ... a dead loss. And as for yesterday's brilliant idea about everybody having to live in London, and all the good things that would flow from it .... I've also considered the "opposite" idea ... everybody lives apart from everyone else ... spread out over the whole of the UK, equidistant from each other. Well, it would cut down on fights outside pubs I suppose. And for a lot of people, it would be a long way to the shops. Quite how far, I'm not sure. There we were. The Significant Otter and me, listening to all this Brexit stuff and DUP stuff and Irish stuff .... and all this Universal Credit stuff and Kanye West wanting to be called "Ye" in future, and how the North is starved of government funding .... Anyhow, we came up with a solution to many of our current problems ... it's do-able, and environmentally friendly as well. Here we go then ... EVERYBODY WILL HAVE TO LIVE IN LONDON Think about it ! Think about all the benefits !! The whole of the rest of the country will be a huge, massive National Park , like the Everglades or Lithuania or whatever , with environmentally-aware farms, huge forests, unpolluted lakes, no noisy kids and their noisy families in bloody theme parks .... it would all be gloriously empty. We'll cart all the Ulsterers over to London as well, and the Scots, and the Welsh. Think of the huge reduction in travel..... lower emissions and no more need for a Northern Powerhouse ( surely some sort of joke anyway) or ... or anything ! No need for a hard border between N and S Ireland .. there'll be nobody in the top bit !! or we could sell it to the southerners ... that would be good.Win-win .. from hard-border to no-border. London's bloody massive already ... so a bit more won't hurt, and it will get all those poor, sad, cold, "Nonlondeners" into warmth, more daylight (lack of daylight is a huge driver of depression), less rain,sleet,show,hail etc and a rapid and efficient transport system, plus the opportunity to see celebrities that you don't get in Wigan, I can assure you. And every day there's more royals to see, so that's good. Plus ... that London " Heat Island" would be even heatier ! Think of the energy saving there. But what about the dear dear dicky birds ? Well, there'd be more or less the whole of the UK freed from humans, and in many parts it would revert to what it used to be ... mainly a huge forest, with moorland and mountains higher up. Capercaillies everywhere, so I might get to tick it. If I had a big enough telescope. But hey .... we could do all our ticking and twitching with webcams and drones these days ... we could stay in our luxury flat in London, and spot birds wherever we like from the warmth and comfort of our very own London home. As well as being so high up, we could scope stuff for miles around. Webcams and drones .. much better than whizzing across the country in those car thingys with your mates. Much, much better . ... and safer London would have far more peanut-feeders per cubic metre, more bird-baths, more ponds .... perfect. And people would learn to appreciate all those urban birds , of which there would be many more. And the extra heat would encourage more exotics to live there as well. Maybe we could even do the farming thing remotely too ... farmers are already guiding their tractors etc with satnavs ... why not do the whole thing that way ? I can't see why they don't get started now. What could possibly go wrong ?? They'll have to be careful though, to avoid it finishing up like this .... But they have proved to be very good at delivering huge projects in the past, have they not ? ... er ..... At the minute I can't think of a bit of music to go with that ... I'll give it a think. OK ... I've thunk..... Lou Reed ... "Berlin" ..... a wisp of a song for a hulk of a city .... Yes ... another brilliant, inspiring birding book ... but this is one you've most probably never heard of. It's an account, almost day-by-day , of Ted Abraham's 1984 birding exploits .... it's more-or-less home-made, typewritten !? then professionally printed , and packed with smashing drawings by Bill Morton ( WM in the pictures). You had to "send off" for it to the author ... it might even have involved Postal Orders ...this was a long time ago .... but it was well worth the wait ... have a look at a few pages and you'll see for yourself ... here's a "twitched" Little Egret ... different times ! Although T.A. is Cheshire-based, over that year in pursuit of a 300 year-list he went everywhere ..... along with a variable set of companions .... Here he is writing about his own area ... Frodsham Marsh ... getting a bird I saw too, but on May 9th . What a bird that was. Here's some more glimpses from this brilliant little book .... this one I missed ... oh, I went for it ...twice I think ..but no luck. I told you the drawings were good ... ...very good... I saw this too ... I was a busy young Hector then ... .. and this one ..... It's the perfect book for a wet, birdless, miserable day ..although, of course, we hardly ever get them . The writing is just right, full of enthusiasm and the thrill of the chase. But I've no idea how you get hold of a copy.... I don't think many exist, and the ones that do are, I'm sure, greatly treasured. I think this song fits well with today's post ... Senses Working Overtime ... XTC live ... you'll find a lot more of WM's artwork here .... ...
hoodoocrow.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/published-work/ Here's a top way to do a bit of birding-related stuff whilst whooshing along in the car. Yes, you could try to add to your "in-car-list" , which is the obvious thing, or your "trip-list" which is, of course, very very important, but you know all about them already. You could spend the journey boasting about all your birding exploits, and, of course, listening to the other passengers boasting about theirs, but that can only go on for a so long ...a few weeks maybe.Then there's silly questions ... which birds are also a bird spelled backwards ... that sort of nonsense. But this one, ghostbirds, is an endless source of ..well, I don't know what it's an endless source of, but it's fun anyhow.And you can do it whilst driving at night as well ...as the bishop said to the actress. Let's see what a "ghost" is shall we .... then you'll know what it's all about. TREECREEPER hey, there's a treecreeper TREECREEPER ooooo .... it's disappearing ! R C E now it's just the "ghost" of a treecreeper. So is CPE ..... TREECREEPER and RER .....TREECREEPER TREECREEPER (in many ways !) .... it's as if most of the letters have just blown away in the recent gales ! ...... leaving just a "ghost" of the original, complete word. And .. there's loads of other ghosts of treecreeper..... ERP EEC RRR CPR ..... But what has this got to do with driving along our majestic highways ? You're driving along and you see this numberplate .... GD08 RCE You concentrate on the 3-letter bit .................. RCE Whooo! that RCE .... that's the "ghost" of a treecreeper !! 1 point to me ! Hey .. it's also the ghost of Cream-coloured Courser ! Another point ! And Great-Crested Grebe ! Another point. Crumbs !! Remember, it's what's left standing after the other letters have been stolen by those notorious gangs of alphabet thieves trying to complete their sets. Let's try another one .... that number plate up at the top ... H41 RDO Just look at the RDO bit. Think of it as all that's left after a swarm of nasty Audubon's Lettergobblers have snaffled all the others..... . ...or a bit like those shop signs where some of the letters have fallen off ! What bird could RDO have been before various letters fell off ? For a start, we've got our old favourite ... Cream-coloured Courser !! Cream-coloured Courser Yes ! Another point. But there's a much simpler and shorter bird that has RDO as its ghost. I'm sure you can find it ... not that there's many of them about these days. And you can probably find more of your own RDO ghosts. Here's some more ghostbirds for you to fathom out ..... ... most of them should be easy enough... .... right then ... music time ..... I'm going to put this on again because I like it ... and it's wordy ...... WSH ... "Nur ein Wort" ..... and I hope you like it too. And, of course, WSH is a "ghost" of WHITE'S THRUSH Think of it like this ... a birder finds a White's Thrush ... his life's main triumph. So he spells out WHITE'S THRUSH" on his lawn with Crocus bulbs so in the spring it will spell out his top birding glory ... but only a W, S and H come up ! And he's so disappointed, he gives up the ghost. I've now explained all this ghost stuff about 231 different ways .... cripes. RDO .. TURTLE DOVE by the way. and ... obviously ... SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHER There's probably others if you're desperate for points. So ... next time you're out driving, or even strolling through the town, why not do a bit of "ghostbirding" with the parade of passing number-plates ? I mentioned a few posts ago the crap start to the October vismigging season ... with loads of soggy, cold, miserable weather.To be fair there's been a bit of a Yellow-browed influx, but the "standing out there watching the sky and listening" sort of VM-ing hasn't been a comfortable option really. So, taking a lead from that " overnight recording" that people are doing,and which I wrote about a post or two ago, I thought I could try to " remote-ify" my vismigging .... I could go out to the local VM spot at , say, 0630, and leave a camera pointing at the sky so it would film ( and get the audio of) all the birds that went over. Then I could go and pick it up at, say, 10 am and go through it all at home. Just a mo ! What am I saying ?? There's no need for all that ! I could get it to beam it all to my home computer and cut out all that driving around. What was I thinking ? OK ...so I look through the filming results and ID all the flyovers on jizz, previous experience and call recognition. What ! Hold on !! Don't be daft. There must be software that could do all that for me ... ID-ing the calls, using adapted "facial recognition software" to ID all the birds .... simps ! Right ...so all that information comes to me direct, so I copy it all into my diary. Wait a sec ! What am I thinking of ? I must be mad !!! Copying ? No way !! There's no need for all that " writing it up" rubbish. I'm sure I could sort out a way to get the computer to print it all out for me, with times and suchlike. It could all be delivered into the out-tray for me to peruse, file away, draw bar charts, pie charts etc .. Woa ! Hold your horses !! What am I saying ?? The blasted computer could do all that !! Drawing your own bar charts is a mug's game these days. Wake up ! Or rather .. .don't wake up ... there's no need to .... From now on I can just stay in bed listening to the rain/wind/Hurricane Eustace/Storm Dennis-the-Menace and leave the whole shebang to the electronic gubbins. What a relief . I'm sure I could go even further and computerise all my birding activities and just stay in bed reading The Beano. That's the March of Progress for you. " When the rain comes." Relevant or what ? If the rain comes
They run and hide their heads They might as well be dead If the rain comes If the rain comes When the sun shines They slip into the shade And sip their lemonade When the sun shines When the sun shines Rain, I don't mind Shine, the weather's fine I can show you That when it starts to rain Everything's the same I can show you I can show you Rain, I don't mind Shine, the weather's fine Can you hear me That when it rains and shines It's just a state of mind Can you hear me Can you hear me I wonder ... is that the sound of babies being thrown out with the bathwater ? I bet you never thought that graphs could be dangerous ! Remember my harrowing account of the unusually low Common Gull counts on my local river last winter ? The thing was, I didn't bother keeping track of the numbers because I though they would improve ... but they didn't. Over the whole winter period, compared to previous years, numbers were low. So, this year, I have been counting ..and here's a graph of the percentage of Common Gulls in the flock .... well, the first two results anyway. As you can see, there has already been a drastic decline ! Eek, !! And it looks as though my next count is almost certainly going to be less than zero %. Ouch ! It's especially "ouchy" because you can't actually get a negative percentage of birds. Let's take a more sensible approach shall we ... because simply assuming a straight-line relationship isn't working .... Let's try a nice smooth curve ... mathematicians like them ... The curve , which now includes the 3rd count ( 0% Common Gulls) on 1st Oct, at least gives us a somewhat less ridiculous picture. But if we continue that slope, it still predicts a rather foolish negative percentage again. Let's do a different thing entirely ..... let's have a nice symmetrical curve ... like this .... rather clumsily inked in by, er, me. Well, it's neat and (almost) symmetrical, but now it's predicting exponential growth ... from a zero base ! At least it isn't impossible ... but it's hardly realistic. So what do you think the "true" graph over the whole winter season might look like ? What are the Common Gull percentages far more likely to do ? Here's those same three data points with a very different, more realistic "future." And there's a more-or-less infinite number of other fluctuating interpretations of the same set of dots. Yes, the obvious truth is that numbers will fluctuate in an unpredictable way ... certainly in the "middle" of the winter ... obviously at the start and finish of the season numbers will rise as the first arrivals come in. ... and then tail away as they leave. But in between ... who knows ? And the point about all this, really, is that you can't always go using your school-based bog-standard linear graph to describe this sort of system .... nor, for that matter, that third type ... a sort of neat parabola-type plot. Or a whole tranch of other equation-based plots. The "media" are very prone to that sort of thing .... drawing a graph like those first four up there for a potentially unpredictable scenario .... and then happily extending the plot to predict the future situation. And then basing the country's economy on those predictions, or climate change, or oil supplies, or GDP, or population growth, or the price of beer. Or, of course, bird populations, mortality rates, river flows, next winter's weather, arrivals of migratory birds .... the mistakes are all there just waiting to be made ! In some ways, in some situations, thoughtlessly extrapolating a graph can be misleading/dangerous. And on top of all that, there's a whole massive flaw in all of those graphs I've drawn ... something I really ought to have done ... but haven't. So, dear reader, what should I have done ? It's something I've criticised on here before. It's something you will see all the time in the media. I don't think there's all that many songs about graphs so first I'll show you this short video which shows some ways that graphs can be misleading .... ..and now we'll have the music ... DCFC ... Little Wanderer ... with the words. I hope you're still thinking about what those graphs weren't telling you .... I'll let you know after this picture ... Well ... those graphs were based on the PERCENTAGE of common Gulls in the whole gull flock. So that 1st plotted point .... 4.5 % on Sept 2nd doesn't tell you anything about the actual number of Common Gulls that were present. There could have been 4, or 236 or 1146 ..... don't forget that the % might well have been rounded off. When it comes down to it, why did I compare the Common Gull numbers with the total gull count ... what have the other species got to do with it !? It's the Common Gull numbers that were the important thing. Using a percentage effectively loses one of the most vital bits of information ... the actual Common Gull numbers at each count. There's a whole lot of difference between ,say, numbers dropping from 5000 to 2500 and numbers dropping from 10 to 5 ! But, percentage-wise, they're the same. But the first scenario still leaves you with a hell of a lot of Common Gulls ... but the second one doesn't. So ... beware of "survey results" that only tell you the percentages and not the actual numbers. |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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