You all know what it's like when the hide is deserted .... All those anarchic tendencies tend to float up to the surface. I've mentioned some corking wheezes already ... 80-things-to-do-in-hides-when-theres-not-much-about-1.html 83-things-to-do-in-hides-when-theres-nowt-about-2.html 86-things-to-do-in-hides-when-theres-nowt-about-3.html Well, here's another one that's hard to resist. There's no birds to watch, and nobody about. Luckily you have brought with you a large poster with lots of birds on it . Which is good ... but you've swapped all the names around carefully and, of course, undetectably. And/or, you can letraset loads of mad latin names underneath "real" ones. And you put it up on the wall ! Ho-ho !! And on subsequent visits you can take great pleasure from seeing other people misidentifying everything. An extension of this idea is to bring a portable paint box with you, and brushes etc, and then you can subtly alter the nifty posters that are already there. Especially those " painted" ones with kooky, cartoon-like artwork. Like that picture at the top there. They're really asking for it. Nobody's going to notice ... because they're crap already. So .... if November and the coming winter is getting you down in the dumps .. Why not have a go ?
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Here's a dilemma for you ... It's Jack Snipe Time . I used to "get" my Jack Snipe ticked for the year by two different methods. [a] Go down to the estuary at high tide. Walk along said tideline. After 88 years a Jack Snipe whooshes into view. Some times it doesn't. Some times it's only an hour or so. And a very cold hour generally. But I don't feel it's right these days. So I don't do it any more. [b] The Second Way ( sounds v. oriental that) is .. There is a well-known bit of marshy marsh known for Jack Snipes. You park the car. You get your wellies on. You walk across said marshy bit. Usually, after about 15 mins, one gets flushed up and flies off. I don't feel good about doing that either. So I don't do that any more either. These days. And here's another thing ... just 10 minutes from my Flintshire mansion, there's a nice big muddy pond in a field .... and in't winter there's Snipes there, and the odd Jack Snipe. Aha ! Well, a certain person, we'll call him-her a nice neutral name like "Sam" apparently counted about 40 Snipes there and 1 Jack Snipe at 11am on a recent survey visit. Aha ! I go by that pond fairly frequently, and you very rarely see any of those snipes. They're retiring creatures generally, and don't tend to draw our attention. When I say "rarely see them" I mean, hardly ever at all ..almost never. None this year, for a start. So ..how did " Sam" get that count ? I hope he waited for hours and hours until all 40 Snipes and that single Jack Snipe were all on view at once. Very bloody likely. At 11 am !! I could "get" them easily enough .... it would take about 5 mins to walk across to the pond, make a racket, chuck a few rocks .... up they come. A starting pistol* might do the job without any "in-field action ." Just saying ! But here's the thing !! Surely I should just add it to my list. I know they're there to be found. Other people do it. It's a marginal example of "railings round the park" These days " nice" people lose out. And the "nasty" people don't. 143-railings-round-the-park.html * I've always thought that they should be called "Startling Pistols"
Yes, long-suffering readers all, it's That Time Again when I reach yet another 100 posts-worth of Bird-Related-Whimsy ... some of which has had various bits of poetry/Verse/Doggerel in it. And here it all is, in all its Tattered Terribleness.... Aha ! this first bit has a picture to go with it as well ... it's from Post 623 ish, all about a lovely Hunkin book, and what an excellent new and pioneering Field Guide he could create for us ..... I reckon that ALL Field Guides should be like that ... Imagine how he would show us all the subtleties of vagrant Wheatears ! Just think about all those Stints/Wagtails/Pipits/Waders etc that are just crying out to be Hunkinned ... bring it on, say I. Hey- up ... I feel a "poem" coming on I hope it won't be o v e r - l o n g POEM IN PRAISE OF HUNKIN And as for Jizz He'd be a Whizz with Feather Tracts he'd make the facts PiCtOriaL not dull at all. And Sub Species he'd draw with Ease Separating Those from These Despite them being far too similar Which many of the beggars are... as well as being far too small and hardly visible at all. And bringing in new ID points Like the angles of the joints between the various leggy bits he even sells Protractor Kits which you can fasten to your scope Using the Right Length of Rope, and then the Intertarsal Angles will settle all your ID tangles in a jiff, without those whiffs of dispute, fights or fusticiffs Which cast a blight on every outing And lead to harglyments and showting. So, Mr. Hunkin, please write and draw This New Approach we all yearn for We know that you're the man to do it And then we'll all rush out and buy it ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This next one is a bit odd... but you'll soon sort it out .... it's from post 628 wh ot y sn ow kn h he et yy ll ca ti e ta cs ge in ng si ir m ra me um u ts n ra ib ev s th gh ou hr tt gh li sf ke ta rk la ky as t. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This one is from #640 ..... it's all about the trials and tribulations of doing a bird count ... and the amazingly fascinating graphs I made as well ... I've been counting Common Gulls again it's not a lot of fun the weather's awful, gales and rain and not a glimpse of sun but someone has to do it and currently its ME so I take my "better" jacket and a dinky flask of tea and extra gloves and three spare hats and various costly optics and a dinky-winky camera in case I take some pics so here's the current plot it's quite a gripping sight there's lots of things to spot though some might say it's shite well, that's one point of view and I've tried to do my best to present to all of you this sort of palimpsest ! If you want to see said graphs etc, here they are ... 640-more-exciting-graphs.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This one's from 647 ..... it's all about The Flat Controller, who is a lovely bloke but his driving is terrible .... and he's pretty awful as a passenger as well ...
I was stonkled and terrifried when his Top Friend, " The King of Bryher", told me he had got a lift in The Flat Controller's car the other day When you're young, you have this strange and irrational feeling of immortality. I told you he was very flat. (and he's actually flatter than that) That's why he can't wear a hat And certainly not a cravat. His flatness is famous worldwide Especially when viewed from the side He's only a fingernail wide For him 'tis quite easy to hide. Despite being amazingly thin He weighs about 400 lbs Considering the state he's in it's amazing he's not underground. And beware if he asks for a lift his "short cuts" must be firmly dismissed he'll bust your suspension offer NO compensation and you'll be incredibly miffed. It's even worse when he is driving you've a minuscule chance of surviving ... He rubs his eyes and picks his nose and wipes the snot all down his clothes. He scrapes the windscreen with his sleeves From lane to lane he ducks and weaves And yells and shouts at other drivers and calls them layabouts and skivers but because he's as thin as he is they can't see him, he's almost invis ! They're baffled, bemused and completely confused so "off" he is able to "whizz" and leaves them all for dust as all such drivers must. So ...never get into his car or let him into your's you'll not get very far before he starts to snore which can be quite surprising especially when he's doing the driving. Seriously folks .... apart from all that, his gravitational pull can have a serious effect on your attempts to get away from his famously unpopular bird mortuary. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This one's from post 676 ..... On First Looking into Stodgy's Bryher Much have I trampled though the sludge and shit And many soggy bogs and slag-heaps seen; Round many eastern islands have I been, Which bores and bigheads oft indeed inhabit. Oft of one "wide expanse" have I been told The "Flat Controller" was, I'm sure, his name Yet never could I stand his sheer disdain Till Old Oddie cursed him loud and bold : Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new species flies into my ken ; Or like stout Oddie who, with trusty pen His BBRC description deftly scribes. Then came together all the birding tribes - Silent, upon the tip of Innisidgen ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, dear readers both, I'm sure you will have spotted that the "poem" up there was really my pale and humble shadow/parody of ..... “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” By John Keats (1795–1821) MUCH have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been, Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortes when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This last one was written especially to put on here, 27/11/2019 ..... It's another of those E.J Thribb-style obituaries ..... SO ! Farewell then Jonathan Miller We spoke together once, half a century ago. And more. Into the big hall I ambled, and there you were W a i t i n g. You were the Speaker. But nobody came ... but me. He would not have forgotten me, my hair down to my elbows. His only audience a ginger freak. We talked about semiotics but that was only the ha- -lf of it. Antibiotics.. Cryogenics... Pyrotechnics.... Plate tectonics. Yes. He was a polymath if nothing else. 20 brief minutes went by and then we parted. And today he de-parted (presumably) Owl and all... for good. What has an owl got to do with it ? asked Keith's mum... Jonathan Wolfe Miller ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I thank you for your attention . Well folks, Mr. G came round to our palatial house yesterday in a great big van with a canoe on top. I just didn't ask ! I had just unwrapped my just-arrived just ordered DVD of that " Big Year" film, which had just been recommended to me by the just-about-in-a-good-mood King of Bryher. Mr. G informed me that it was an amazing and wonderful film. Just wonderful. I just decided to decide for myself. Obviously, we mostly just talked about mad journeys which, in retrospect, were perhaps just a bit dodgy... but we were young then, just full of over-confidence, invulnerability and shite ! And we were both just at a point in our so-called lives when we were somewhat short of the magic 400 and probably just weren't going to be arsed to run after it. I just haven't actually got round to WATCHING the film ... The Significant Otter had some friends round all afternoon, so I was just banished from the house and roamed the mean streets as darkness engulfed everything. I'm just hoping that in the coming weeks I will find just a tiny window of opportunity and get to watch it. I might have to do it just in little chunks. Moving on .... one plus point about the book is ..it has got an INDEX!! But, oddly, the very first thing I tried to look up in the index wasn't there. Ethel Merman ..... she just wasn't in it. It's not on ! * Nor was Merman, Ethel for that matter. Just what was she doing in a birding book anyway, we ask ourselves. See for yourselves ... here's her bit ... p97 ... " Grackles crackled and catbirds meowed, but loudest of all were the dibdibmbdbt, the Mexican thicket-dweller that sounded as if Ethel Merman had swallowed a rusty trombone." So, dear reader ... what was that Ethel-esque bird ? Or should it be, Merman-esque ? Obviousl, the weren't dibdibmbdbt .... that's just a jumble of letters I've tripetapped randoml on the tripetapper just to cunningl hide its real name. I think it's just about worked. But the good news is, ou've got everlong to work it out. I think m ( letter between x and z) has just packed in. But, er, wh ? Extraordinar, reall. * And that's not all ... on page 171, a "Mr. Pants" appears ... but he/she/it just isn't in the index either.
Seriously folks ... that's just the sort of bloke we want to know about. But loads of boring old names are in the index ... "Ponce de León, Juan" for example, on p. 155 And on p57 we will find... "Lane, Jim." Boring .. or is he ? And "Parker, Ted" gets 2 pages ... 58 AND 59. BORING ALERT !!!!!. Way way back. at post 693 actually, I wrote about finding, deep down in the depths of the junk heap which I think of as my office, a book that I bought about 1000 years ago in Cromer but then lost it and therefore never read it. It was another book about a " Big Year" ... here's that wacky front cover again ... ..... and over the last few days of our ecstatic reunion (?) I've been getting the flavour of it. And the flavour is .... MONEY, AIR MILES, MORE MONEY THAN SENSE, BITTER FEUDS, HOTEL ROOMS FAST CARS. In fact most of it is MONEY ! Spending a year trying to out-tick loads of other over-rich shits in a country the size of a small planet is quite a thing. And they're getting into the 700's here ! Deary me ! But .. it is gripping. And in an odd way, you get to feel sorry for the poor sods on a meaningless and puerile quest. And it certainly makes me feel less guilty about driving 18 miles to see an alleged obscure variant of Wheatear, or other odd activities. Chickenfeed ! Even my longest and most pointless twitches from the past now seem totally innocuous compared to that lot.... the Mad Black Lark Afternoon, the right dodgy icy-roads-in-the-dark lunatic dash to Montrose to "get" Ivory Gull, only for one to turn up a couple of week later 15 miles from my house .... the many Flat-Controller knuckle-gripping screaming-tyre-trips to numerous , often absent, birds ... all seem like picnics in the park compared that lot ! So .. if nothing else ... read it and get that smug feeling that you, dear reader, are not some Tick-Addicted Twerp, but actually a Paragon of Patchwork Propriety in a mad world of Wad-Waving Wankers !! So there ! Maybe it turned out to be A Very Good Year .... but somehow,I doubt it. Here's yet another table from that " How many rarities are missed?" thingy. This time they're looking for " weekend bias". Apparently, in some places more rare birds get found at the week-ends. Coo !! But something is missing/not explained that would be quite useful ... but it isn't there. There's a bit of a clue there for you ..... . . . . ↓ Well... they haven't told us readers what that "Chi-sq" thingy is. It's very kind of them to assume that we all know what it is and what it tells us ... but it would be kinder to tell us as well, just in case. So ... I'm going to tell you instead, seeing as they can't be bothered. You've probably noticed that Holkham has the BIGGEST chi-squared value ( 54.1) and the Holkham numbers are quite varied... the biggest result (30) is a massive ! 10 x the smallest rarity count ( 3) . Basically, they're all over the bloody place. On the other hand, the location with the lowest chi-sq value (Dungeness, 2.9) has results which are pretty similar .... the largest (17) is only about 1½ x the smallest (11). So ,the chi-squared result is a measure of how "all-over-the-bloody-place" your results are. Please excuse the technical terms there. The "posh" way of putting it is to say that the results are/aren't "homogenous" or "clustered closely around the mean/expected value". So..... now you need to how how to work out that vital chi-squared number. Because it will tell you exactly how " all-over-the-place" the results are. [ At this point, I offer you the option of not bothering to learn how to do it. ] [ I suspect there are "apps" that will do it for you ] [ Whatever "apps" are ] I'm going to go through it all myself, but I found this nifty video which is reasonably good ..... it's not perfect though. * But it does show you the basic "worky-out" process. You will need to bung your " picture quality" up to max to stop the numbers getting rather blurred when you enlarge it all to full screen mode. So ....that's how you get your chi-squared numbers. And now I'm going to show you how they worked out that previously-mentioned " Dungeness" one in the table I put on at the beginning, ( Chi-sq = 2.9) using the same process .. here's the numbers .. 13 12 11 11 11 16 17 First we work out the mean ..... we add them all up (91) ... and we divide by 7 = 13 That's what he called the "expected" number ... "E " Right then ... the first result is 13. We subtract E, our "average" from it 13- 13 ... = 0 ( that was a tricky one) Then we square it ... 0 x 0 = 0 Then we divide by the average, "expected" number ..... 0 ÷13 = 0 ........................................................ We now move on to the 2nd result ... 12 We again work out O - E = 12 -13 = -1 and we square it ... -1 x -1 = 1 Then we divide it by E ( 13) .... 1 ÷ 13 = 0.0769 ........................................... Moving on to our 3rd result ... 11 We subtract 13 again ........ 11-13 = -2 We square it ....................... -2 x -2 = 4 We divide that by E again .... 4 ÷ 13 = 0.3077 there's three lots of 11 .. ... so we add all three up ... 0.3077 + 0.3077 = 0.3077 = 0.923 ......................................... Let's "do" the next one ... 16. 16 - 13 = 3 3² = 9 9 ÷13 = 0.6923 ..................................................... Now the last one phew! 17. 17 -13 = 4 4² = 16 16 ÷ 13 = 1.231 Woo !! We've worked all the chi-squared thingys out. Now we add them all up to get the total chi squared essential result ... 0 + 0.0769 + 0.923 + 0.6923 + 1.231 = 2.92 ( 2.9 in the table up top) So Chi² = 2.92 with 6 degrees of freedom. (What ?) Never mind the technicalities... D of F is just 1 less than the number of numbers you've got. 7-1= 6 OK ..... working that out is the first step. So .... I want you to have a go at working out the chi-sq result for the site with the biggest chi-sq ... Holkham. It "ought" to be 54.1 or thereabouts ... it depends how much rounding-off you did. [ Note ... this is not compulsory .... you could try that "app" I mentioned ] [ Or just , er, do something else. Birding is usually relaxing ] [ I seem to remember that nobody "did" that Poisson distribution thing either ] And then I'll show you how to "use" that number to confirm/reject the crucial .. NULL HYPOTHESIS ! You can't wait !! Come to think of it, if you've got this far, you probably know it already. or you can work it out yourselves. There ought to be a band/song with the title " Null Hypothesis". Would you believe it ... there is !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Briwsion ! * And I couldn't type that big thingy that looks like a an M that's tipped over backward after drinking too much.
It just means "add up all your calculated results" Situated as I am in Fabulous Flintshire, we don't just get birders around " our" table at The Grumbling Stumps tea-room ... we get climbers. And, in true Venn Diagram fashion, we get people who do both. But we are very tolerant of each other .... and we have a lot in common. For a start, we carry a fair bit of stuff around with us. Much of it round our necks. And on our backs And ... we "do it" outdoors. And read about it indoors. And we travel long distances to get "there" ...wherever "there" is that day. Then there's the clothes. Of necessity, we tend to wear a lot of them. With loads of pockets. And stringy things to tighten them up. And badges. The jackets often have foreign names on them. As do binoculars and telescopes..... ...although the truth is ... they are the names of the Gods who brought them to our planet many thousands of years ago .. Kowa, Swarovski, Leica ..... oh yes. And "naming things" is a big deal for both parties. Except they name routes and tackle .... and we name birds and bits of birds. Those "climb" names are amazingly diverse and weird too. As are remiges and tertials and allopreening etc. Every climbing route, even every section of a climb, has a name. You must have driven past miles of "little cliffs" at some time . Well, like as not, every little section will be a climb/scramble with a name. Biggish detached boulders have names too. Bouldering is big with climbers. They carry a mattress for when they fall off said boulders. And I bet they each climber has a name for his bloody mattress too. We both go around in crammed cars ... ... and bulging with stuff as well ... .... and we both worry about the weather ..... and the time ...... and we take the piss out of each other ...... and we slag off all the people that aren't in the car. ....... and we're much quieter on the way back. And both climbers and birders don't tend to die of climbing or birding. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that birding was "deadlier" than climbing. And in different ways, we're all on a ladder of some sort .... ticking birds, going up things, being "better" than "somebody else" .... at least this ladder is "ours" ... And ... here's the "words video" .... try not to disturb the neighbours .... Here's the link to that stuff about aliens and their gods who brought telescopes to our Earth ...
( I can't find it .... bah ...... do any of you lot out there know where it is? ) This time we're having a bit out of this interesting and thoughtful book of impressions and experiences ..... My " Camera ... Picture .... Loading it on here" system seems to have collapsed ... so I'm going to type it out myself ... you'll see that it is American in the very first sentence ... we've all been in this sort of situation ... It's autumn migration and watchers have much to see, mostly warblers, although in their duller fall plumage. Thursday's Children, having already seen a Lark Bunting this chill and foggy morning, are positioned on both sides of a stand of Monterey Cypresses, binoculars raised to the black canopy where movement has been noted.The fog has drained much of the color from the birds and they are so high up that likely only their undersides will show. Gradually other watchers arrive and take up positions under the trees. I lower my binoculars to see if I know any of them and also to give my back a rest.Everyone else seems to be concentrating on the birds and, suddenly, I feel alone or distanced from them, even members of my own group. My eyes stop at a man on the other side of the stand. He's a stranger to me, but a typical watcher, fiftyish, face weathered by sun and rain ( a "well-documented face" as one friend said of another) ,his loose-fitting garb brown and gray as faded fall plumage. He wears a visored camouflage army cap, and I can see from where I stand that his binoculars show the shiny scratch marks of much use. About him there is an aura of self-containment, of his own purposive, competent, and stubborn actuality. I am utterly excluded and remote from his life, and, as I look from individual to individual, from the lives of all the others here, some not three feet from where I stand. It is as though my mind were drifting in a sea of internal fog. It is as though all my own purposes were drained away by that fog as the outer fog has drained the colors from the birds. Epiphany, real presence, shock of recognition, reverence, intimations .... all the poetic terms for hopeful intuitions, now seem empty, frivolous, wholly beside the point, naming only what my ignorance has projected. Even while I am thinking all this, someone points up at what seems a little twitch of leaves flicked by wind .... no, I'm told, it's a female Black-throated Blue Warbler. I sort of see it. But I can also hear ( in my imagination) one of these watchers saying to another, " He doesn't understand. He just doesn't get it." And at this bad moment, I don't. I have no heart for more watching today. I go through the motions, but without joy or even pleasure. I say to myself " The poetry has gone out of it." But it's not that. It's the awareness that self-pity, what I am feeling now, is so powerful a drug. If I were a nineteenth-century poet, I would probably project the feeling onto a nightingale ( confusing its sex) and be done with it. Simply imagining that makes me feel a little better. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As I said at the start, most of us have felt like that at times, perhaps many times. And I think he expresses those feelings very well. Right .. 'tis music time, and my son messaged me this morning that he was watching top Welsh band "The Joy Formidable" ..... and he'd found out about them from my Welsh blog. But then, looking on youtube I found they have now got some acoustic versions of their songs, and this one is a right whizzer ! Here's four more birding organisations I've come across recently ...... all highly respected bodies, I'm sure, but they have missed something .... but they are in good company with other similarly fallible conglomerations such as the RSPB and the Merseyside Naturalists Association. But what have they missed ..... here they are ... get thinking ! Heysham Marina Gull Observers Rutland Water Migration Group Shotton Heath Starling Recorders Thames Marshes Wader Watchers Right then .. here's "the music" to sooth the swirling brain ... and after that, a bit of help ..... I chose Primal Scream because that's what you might do after 36 minutes of wondering what the hell is wrong with those no doubt worthy societies ! ..and if, after much thought and farting about, you haven't a clue, you can go to this handy link to find out what their big boob was .... 256-birding-the-silly-side.html .. but you'll still have to do a bit of the work yourselves . BUT .... hazard ahead .... don't try it with the Death Valley Observers Union !! You have been warned. I was rootling around in my "office/attic/junkheap when I came across this book .... ...which I don't actually remember buying ... but I did .... inside it was the receipt..... I, or somebody, got it from Sue Ryder Care, 61 Church Street, Cromer on 28/07/2008 ... It was sold to me by Jeanne, for a mere £1:50 I don't remember reading it either. Blimey. Anyway, I mentioned it to The King of Bryher (TKOB), and he told me there was also a film of it..... so of course, I looked that up too .. and found this ( totally crap) trailer .... that's not just my opinion, it is everybody's ! Because it really is a crapulous trailer ... But the good news is .... TKOB says its good, and the reviews are good too, and you can get it very cheaply on amazon .... so, you're sorted. If you like that sort of thing. Which you might .... because .. ... here's a much better short clip from the film ... ... and here's another ... .. I'm sure you'll think better of it after that. And now, the VRM ... vaguely relevant music ... |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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