I haven't actually worked out the % of daylight scenes in the current Autumnwatch episodes .. but nearly all of it seems to be IN THE BLOODY DARK. And I well remember that long walk he did a few weeks ago where he got gloomier and gloomier as he went along. Seriously. If that jacket isn't reptilian then what is it ? And there they are .. in the dark. I would suspect that the average Autumnwatchwatcher doesn't do much of their bird-spotting in the dark. But now, what about a bit of music ...... Septembre en Attendant (Noir Desir)
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The Significant Otter ( TSO) has been away for a couple of days, so I was looking forward to some birding ..... but on day one I had a huge list of things ( kindly provided by TSO) I had to do which took until 2pm. That's women for you. But eventually ... ....I whizzed up to Grumbling Stumps. The weather was rather crap .....and got crappier as I approached ...and even crappier. And when I got there, it was raining quite a lot, and the whole place was ...er ... extremely mud-ificated. Anyhow, I sloshed around a bit, seeing bog all due to the terrible weather, then I went up to the cafe ..which was more like a ghost town ... more or less nobody there, and both of them were old dodderers. ( Yes, I know I'm also an old dodderer, but never mind about that right now) SO ... after an exciting ten seconds reading the "sightings list" I went back home. But ... that was all a paradise compared to the next day of my "freedom." I woke up to a tremendous racket which turned out to be a massive storm, with mega-velocity wind and unbelievable rain ...it went on ALL DAY ! ( The Significant Otter was basking in the sun down south. Grrrr. ) SO ..... I'm hoping today will be a bit better...... ... here's The Music Spot .. First Aid Kit .. " Ghost Town" ...and over the last few weeks I've started indexing my own birding diaries .... and there's a lot of them. And I can thoroughly recommend it to all of you out there in the ornithosphere. ( I'm hoping that neologism is going to sweep through the, er, ornithosphere ) For a start, I can now quickly and easily access all sorts of things .. like, for example, how many visits per year I've made to Grumbling Stumps, my local Hornithological Hotspot. And how often I've encountered various birders whom I'd rather not see. That way I can get an insight as to which days they tend to be there, and more interestingly, which days they don't ! The only downside is .... I've got about 50 years of diaries to get through.... ..and that's a lot of words... almost biblically-long The Significant Otter, my companion in what I like to think of as "life" is quite pleased, as indexing keeps me busy, and relatively quiet. Here's some of my other "indexing " "thingies." They're all fascinating, in their own idiosyncratic ways ... 101-toads-swifts-binoculars-all-human-life-is-here.html -134-that-index-and-a-better-one.html 232-kerwacky-wack-twit-pee-oo-etc.html 491-more-index-fun.html 789-yet-another-index.html 830-a-mystery-index-from-the-distant-past.html Here's the wonderful " Music Spot" .... ... an there's only ONE bird in it .... keep looking carefully ... .......and here's the "sing-along-with-Diam's version ... you know you want to ... Many birds can navigate their way to Africa and back. Many create intricate nests. They're obviously very very clever. Maybe! Read on ! Gulls, geese and other ground-nesting birds have a stereotyped response to an egg that has rolled out of a nest. They reach over and roll it back in with the underside of their bill. Tinbergen and his students showed that gulls will do this not just to their own eggs but to hen's eggs and even wooden cylinders or cocoa tins discarded by campers. Baby Herring Gulls get their food by begging from their parents, by pecking at the red spot on the parent's bill, stimulating the parent to regurgitate some fish from its bulging crop. Tinbergen and a colleague showed that crude cardboard dummies of a parent's head are very effective in provoking begging behaviour from the young. All that is really necessary is a red spot. As far as the baby gull is concerned, its parent is a red spot. It may well see the rest of its parent, but that doesn't seem to be important. Adult Black-headed Gulls are conspicuous because of their dark face masks. Tinbergen's student, Robert Mash, investigated the importance of this to other adults by painting wooden dummy gull heads. Each head was stuck on the end of a wooden rod attached to electric motors in a box so that by remote control, Mash could raise or lower the head and turn it left or right. He would bury the box near a gull's nest and leave it with the head safely out of sight beneath the sand. Then, day after day, he would visit a blind near the nest and watch the gull's reaction to the dummy head when it was raised and turned this way or that. The birds responded to the head and its turning just as though it were a real gull,yet it it was only a mock-up on the end of a wooden rod, without any body, without legs or wings or tail, silent and without movement apart from an unlifelike robotic rotating and lowering. To a Black-headed Gull, it seems, a threatening neighbour is little more than a disembodied black face. No body, no wings, or anything else seems to be necessary. Turkey mothers are fierce protectors of their young from marauders like Weasels or scavenging rats. The rule of thumb a Turkey mother uses to recognize nest robbers is a dismayingly brusque one: In he vicinity of your nest, attack anything that moves, unless it makes a noise like a baby Turkey. Another Turkey savagely killed all her babies, the reason being woefully simple. She was deaf. Predators, as far as the Turkey's nervous system is concerned, are defined as moving objects that don't emit a baby's cry. These baby Turkeys , though they looked like baby Turkeys, moved like baby Turkeys, and ran trustingly to their mother like baby Turkeys, they fell victim to the mother's restricted definition of a "predator." She was protecting her own children against themselves, and she massacred them all. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All very sad, but it seems that many creatures have a rigid internal set of algorithms which, in certain circumstances, lead to unwanted and unfortunate "errors." But I assume that most of the time they "work." And that's the best they can do. Strangely, I can't find a single video of a " bird rolling an egg into the nest" ... or even just "rolling an egg." (!!) So ,instead, we'll have some music .... Zwei Fragen ..... One of the saddest things about being human is ...we know we're going to die. But ... what if we think about other animals. I don't think woodlice know they're going to die. I don't think that worms do either. Or snakes. But at some point in the progress of evolution, surely at some point in the trajectory, there's a strong suggestion that ,say, horses do. Birds, of course, will see dead birds. And they'll see dead chicks in the nest. And they'll see dead birds on the ground and start to eat them. Some birds even kill other birds. And eat them. BUT ..does that mean that they "know" about their eventual death ?? That's probably something we'll never know. I've got quite a few bird skulls .... and I wonder about all the thousands of miles they might have travelled over oceans and continents. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, that was all rather gloomy... so we want an uplifting bit of music...... Wir sind Helden ... Lass uns verschwinden .... "let us disappear" .... Those "Möwen" by the way, are seagulls.
â  ê Ê É È î Î ô Ô û Û Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ ç í á à â ä œ ç é è ê ë ç í ì î ï ó ò ô ö ù ø ú Ú û ü û Ï Ç ß Ü Ä Ë Ï Öñÿ•‡¡÷°¼½¾œ ƶ π I bet those leg-piddling Storks have been heavy on your mind lately.. Luckily, I've been reading all about it .... and here's what the the experts say about it ... ready..steady .... GO .. but don't try this at home ... Storks, cormorants and vultures indulge in urohydrosis: they literally cool themselves by urinating down their legs. Because birds do not urinate and defecate separately,everything comes out together, which makes bird droppings very watery. The heat required to evaporate this liquid from the surfaces of the legs cools the blood, carried close to the surface of the legs by a network of veins. Before you start to dislike "that sort of thing" for their rather gruesome party trick, it's worth adding that bird droppings contain uric acid, which acts as an effective antiseptic. And that's very useful for vultures, as they spend a lot of time trampling over rotten carcasses. Afterthought : what a wonderful life those birds have ! Some types of birds seem to enjoy spraying their legs with piss. They don't care, they are not coy it's totally hit & miss and at the same time they shit as well which results in a heap of slime. My problem now is .... how to fit the music with all of that ? Don't worry .. I've got the very thing .... This was an article in the current RSPB mag " Nature's Home" that I wasn't very happy with . Here's a condensed version of what they wrote ...... Two holiday-makers noticed a large bird in their apartment courtyard. They recognised it as a Swift in trouble, but ignorant of what to do they tried feeding it and giving it water.... to no avail. On day two they looked up the RSPB website and found that a grounded Swift could not fly without help. The website said to get expert help, which was not possible. However, they read that if the bird was taken to an open space it could be helped to get back into the air. They took the bird with a tea towel over its eyes in case it was frightened. At the harbour the husband lifted it high into the air. It took a while and they were getting a bit despondent , but eventually the bird flew off over the harbour to freedom. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Underneath that letter, there was a response from the "NH Team" whoever they are. Their advice was ... If you find a grounded Swift in the UK, contact a local rescue centre for advice; swiftconservation.org has a list of carers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, I don't think much of that ! For a start, releasing it over a harbour is asking for trouble ! Secondly, the two-day wait was a bad idea. Obviously. I've "rescued" quite a few Swifts that have landed on the ground. The key thing is, they need to be fairly high up... they can't launch themselves into the air without being fairly high up to start with. Two-storey house size at least. More if possible. Lifting it just above your head is useless. When a Swift is released it needs to quickly gain speed, and it does it by swooping down steeply. So you don't want a body of water to land on, so a harbour is not ideal. So ... go up to the attic window, or onto somebody's high balcony .... that sort of thing. Bob's your Uncle. As it happens, over the road from us they've put up 3 fancy-pants posh-looking Swift boxes, but the Swifts have never used them. Which is good, because they are FAR TOO LOW DOWN. Anyway folks, that's my fourpenny-worth. ( I'm not going to put you off by reminding you that Swifts are notoriously flea- ridden. So I won't mention it. ) I set off to Grumbling Stumps before the crack of dawn. But why ? I'm too old for "that sort of thing." nowadays. Well, at my age there might not be many more "nowadays." So ... there's a bird at said GrSt that has been eluding me all year. An unprecedented thing. I've never- not- spotted them for so long. AND .. AT LAST... I got 'em ! Picked up the calls first. Then they appeared. Coo ! I was so chuffed, I devoured a Celebratory Magnum. (!) And then, in the deep deep dark of night..... We looked out the back of our house ... and lo and behold ... A male Tawny Owl was distantly calling. And that's a pretty rare occurrence these nights. There were lots of other night noises too ... that's night-time for you. .... right then .... music ... and you can ..and should.... sing along with it. I've come up with a theory as to why the birds don't come into the garden as soon as it gets the daylight. Sometimes not showing up maybe half an hour after you would expect cold, hungry birds to be half starved and keen to get eating ! So ... I reckon there's a circuit. The suburban layout is perfect for such a thing. And here's another thought... would it be possible to track down exactly where "my" circuit goes ? I don't think it would be. Just think of all the obstacles in your attempt to track it down. Another complication is that each bird that comes into my garden might be on a different circuit ! And all the circuits intertwine with each other !! Blimey. Has any actual "research" been done about all that ? So ... maybe this humble jumble of thoughts might lead to a whole new avalanche of fairly pointless research . But I think, deep down, that it isn't do-able, taking into account all the obstacles in your way. The only problem now is .. the music ... can I find anything "relevant" ? Yes I can... " The Circle Game"
Here's a fine snap of mine ..... a sort of " Head-in-the-clouds" job. But that was a few days ago ........ ..... but right now, up in my "study" the rain is hammering on the windows ... and we've had days and days of sodding sogging. But .... a mysterious noise has been reported from Ms. Next-Door ..... she apparently heard a bird making a noise like a stick scraping up and down a wash-board ... you know, one of those ridged scrubbing-boards that people used to scrub their clothes on. Mind you, she has a bit of a "track record" with " that sort of thing." She's heard Cuckoos in November for a start . Hmmmm. And various other highly unlikely avian vocalisations. But she won't back down once she's got it into her head that bird X is making noise Y. BUT .. maybe some of my avid readers can come up with a possible-board-scraping-noise species which fits the bill. Maybe. It's 11 a.m. now and the rain is belting down again. Bah !! That magnificent and rather dramatic snap up there was the last picture from my rather crap camera .... because it has bust .
Oh Weh, Oh Weh As those Germans say. Mein Fotoapparat Is as useless as a fart. |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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