Our "Poet Laureate" was on the radio this morning. I would have got up and switched him off, but it was rather compellingly awful ! He's one of those boring, drawly, dreary sort of "poetry readers." He ought to make those " get-you-to-sleep" CDs. And his poetry is seriously underpowered. There must be somebody better than him ! Here he is with "Ark" ..... try to stay awake to get the full effect ... his intro is crap, and the "poem" isn't much better ... he just sounds as if he doesn't even have any interest in it himself. It's amateur stuff .... without the amateur's enthusiasm. Anyway ... have a listen for yourself. I suppose some might like it. But as for me ... I hear the sound of distant barrels being scraped ! And the tumbleweed making its way through the empty brain.
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On post 687 I showed you a graph about " how long do rare birds stay" ...... ... and I asked you to think about that data ...and to pick holes in it. .... and I hope you HAVE been thinking about it. .... here it is again, so you can start thinking now if you want ... Here's what I think about " all that." [a] If Denise sees a Subalpine Warbler on Saturday, and again on Sunday, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the same one. It could be that it has stayed for a 2nd day .... but it might not. They could be different ones. And they might have spent so long photographing it/them, they didn't find the other one 200m away. Which wasn't found until 2 days later ... or was that yet another one ? And if it was "another one", when did IT arrive ? Plus ... it might also have been there on the previous Friday, but there were far fewer observers then, and it wasn't seen. So .. it could have been there just 1 day, or two, or three. Or more ! Or ... they could be different birds. And each of them could have stayed for an unknown amount of time. And because everyone was gawping at them, they might not have picked up on other rarities that were hanging around [b] If Harold spots a Semi-palmated Sandpiper on his local beach , and his friend Jubbins sees one 3 miles away later in the afternoon, it is not necessarily the same one. It probably is .. but not certainly. And ... how does Harold know that it wasn't there yesterday when he was visiting his favourite aunt in Scarborough ? And seeing as both of them weren't out and about on the third day, they've no idea whether it was a 3-day bird either. Oh, Calamity !! You could say that the whole topic was in a beautiful rambling mess ! On that " Transit of Mercury" day, The Significant Otter and me went to Glasgow on the train... and back as well. I hardly ever go on trains ..... and I haven't got a " From The Train" list. The "best" train ride I go on, birding-wise, is to and from Botanic/Bangor in N. Ireland where we go almost every year ... I've had all sorts on that line ... kingfishers, dabchicks, all sorts of waders and gulls , herons, .... and you can do plane-spotting too as you go right by the airport. It has a real mix of all sorts of terrain.... coniferous and deciduous, woods, a big river, a long " superditch" by the massive army base, Belfast Lough and its beaches, and some urban stuff too. And you finish up at the aforesaid Botanic area of Belfast, the "student quarter", where The Significant Otter might well have gone to University, and would then not have ever met me,and then neither of our children would exist, and so on ad infinitum, which is stuffed with 2nd-hand bookshops and, in winter, waxwings. I've even "had" waxwings in the back garden of the dinky house we stay in. Nor, for that matter, have I ever compiled a Scottish list .... I'm not "in" it enough to bother. We ( or rather, me) did see some huge flocks of " Fieldfares-including-some-Redwings" from the train, and lots of mud and rain and long, long miles of nothing ... no people, no habitations, nowt. Quite a bit of snow on the higher-up-bits. As my dad used to say, when you're up in a Lancaster bomber, the UK is empty. Right ... enough of this rambling rubbish ...... music awaits us .... chunky, gritty, moody, dreamy .... .. most music can be described adequately with four adjectives. ..and now, the " Sing-Along-A-Tom" version .... Here's "that table" that I asked you to "think about" on post 684 .. I hope you have thought about it. After all the trouble I've gone to . If you haven't, get back to it RIGHT NOW.... [ decent interval while you go back and think about it] .... so .. I wonder what "you" all made of it ...... ... here it is again, if you didn't see it, or have forgotten it. Well, for a start, I don't like the way it is set out. Also, I'm not too happy about the contents either. Where did they get those " numbers missed" results from. And if they got them from those percentages ... ..... where did they get the percentages from ? ... they say they've "calculated them" ... but HOW ? ... seriously ... nobody knows "how many there weren't" .. have you any idea how many birds you DIDN'T see today ? ... and right at the end of the 8 pages, they agree with me ! ( see the last bit of this post) ( it's further down). Anyway ... I have set it out betterly ... maybe even the betterest way to do it ... And I hope this really is a better way to set the table out ...... So my first "issue" was ..where did "they" get the "number missed" data from ? I don't know ... and I'm not sure they know either. They "say" that they have adopted a "probably-plucked-out-of-thin-air" " 90%" "found" rate in well-watched locations, which seems to lead to a notional 10% of "missed" rarities. But is that any more than an unfounded guess ? ..... anyway, that table says nothing of the sort !!!!! OK .... a few tiny, overcrowded locations ( see lines 2 and 5) are both at 11%. Surely, if they were going to stick to "their" "made-up" 10% figure, they wouldn't have used 11% to work them out. It seems odd to me. I'm just saying ! And then, what about the other farcical "made-up percentages" they've used for the other places ... 57% .... 45% ...... 53% ..... 60 % !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Picked out of a hat, I reckon. And a ridiculous hat at that. And the "mean" figure, kindly worked out by me, gives a 49% "miss" rate. Personally, I think that table is a load of old crap. If any of you out there can defend their table, I'd like to know about it. AND ..there's much more to all this than that. Which I will undertake to explain/criticise/witter about later. And they admit that the " 90% find rate" is an "assumption" .... ...... and in this section, 7 lines up from the bottom (I ran out of red arrows) they admit that the 90% figure is " completely arbitrary" ..or in everyday language " made up " !! ..and here's a song with a very very tenuous degree of relevance .... I estimate it at 10%.... There's lots of birders way ahead of me ..and maybe you ....in the UK Life-List List. But ... I wonder how that list would change if you took into account your carbon footprint .... car mileage, flights in highly-polluting planes and jellycoptyers .. it all adds up. There's a thought. Let's look at Colin Scroggins .... an imaginary Mega-Twitcher. His UK life list is 507. But .. in that time he has driven about 50000 + miles twitching in the UK, and taken 96 flights covering an estimated 7000 miles to and from distant islands etc .... blimey ... how many tonnes of Carbon dioxide is that ? And that doesn't even include all the petrol he's used just on " local birding" over many years. Let's say 10000 miles. That's a whopping 67000 miles for all forms of transport. So .... if we divide his 67000 by his 507 life-list ... .... each of his " ticks has "cost" 67000/507 = 132 miles/tick Whereas me .. little me ... life-list 383 .. has taken 4 helicopter flights ( Scilly) and (rough estimate) driven about 8000 twitching miles + the same again on local stuff. We'll call it about 17000 miles, approx. .. so each of "my" ticks has "cost" 17000 / 383 = 44 miles per tick. ..... so my carbon footprint is about a third of his. ... and I suspect that mine is an overestimate, and his an underestimate ! ... especially with his massive flight-mileage compared to mine. So.. am I "3 x better" that Colin ? And is Colin 3 x "worse" that me ? And I say .. YES !!!!! But I could be a bit biased. Maybe even " bitter and twisted " Wot ? Me ! Anyway ... why not work out "yours" ? Here's another "thing" from that seminal " how many rarities get missed" BB article ...the keen student of such "things" can catch up at posts 681 and 684 . Just in case your "scrolling-back" is not your best skill, here's the links ... 681-another-tricky-question.html 684-those-undetected-rarities.html OK ..assuming you are now up to date with the already mind-withering miasma of multiple, er, dubious assumptions and statements, here's the next thing for you to think about . This is a table from that same article showing you how long a rare arrival is staying ........ here's what THEY say ... .. with a tiny bit of ( what I say ) ... as well .... " This is a vast subject. Fig 5 shows the lengths of stay of rare passerines in Scilly and on Fair Isle and of waders on Scilly. A "one-day" bird is defined as an individual recorded at a site on one date only ; a "two-day bird" is one recorded ( you'll never guess) on two ( and only two) consecutive dates, and so on." Well, dear readers, can you pick any holes in that ? Go on ... you know you want to. And, in the fullness of time, I'll tell you what I think is wrong with it. And ... there'll be more about all this shortly ...... so use the intervening time to think. Here's a fine Del Amitri song about picking holes in things .... . "Keepers"
I have overloved you and overseen you and now you're refusing the gifts that I bring you My hands have been clasping my hot head and asking "If she submits to me, will she be my property?" You may be bleeding but you're not dying though you are dying to go Stop teasing me I'm not seeing you leaving me Here is a party full of my friends and here is a cup being filled up to be drunk again We are just starting luxurious lives to be drunkards and diddymen making Gulf wars and battered wives. Now I may be pleading but there's no love nor fear in my eyes Just greediness I'm not seeing this sleeping dog lie. I am the wild horses who will drag you away I am the locked door who can make you stay And I will act the man in almost anyway I can So I can keep keep keep you. So wake up you pretty thing to a wonderful home Where we while away the happy Saturdays between the television and the telephone And I stroke your head just to feel what I own whispering "Will you be my property, and not my disability?" And why are you craving To be free from love's slavery Stop teasing me Love's not letting go. I am the child calling you to come back and play I am the concert hall in which you hear me say I'll act a man in almost anyway I can So I can keep keep keep you even though you may not understand I am the bee and you are the pollen I am the keeper you are the lion I am the holes down which you would have fallen If I had not been the hand who came and beckoned you (And I'm not seeing this sleeping dog lie) Maybe You were born wrong But why am I picking holes in you when it's holes that we all come from? Maybe I was born strong To stop love from overtaking me To stop love from living too long. And you may be bleeding and leading me to the blood flow But sleep tight tonight lions This keeper's never letting go. Oh yes !! This one's a top-grade whopper of a catastrophic bog-up ! Well ... what a total bodge-up folks. It makes my midgety moth manqué a mightily microscopic mistakelet ! Here's the bigger version of all of it .... bit by bit ... Throughout the Wildlife World they''ll be talking about little else tonight ! Avid readers of this jumble of Jumble will remember that I "got" a female Blackcap on the Rowan in "us garden" as we call it oop in't North like, and then I found out that they don't " not go to Africa", they all come to us from Germany and Austria , allegedly to bask in out milder climate. We live and, in some cases, learn. Well, this morning lo and behold, a blasted MALE turned up. Once at 11 am, and later at 1340. Is it on a circuit ? Hang on .. no jumping to conclusions folks. It might have been a different male. Anyway, it was my Bird of the Day. The King of Bryher laughed like a drain when I revealed my total ignorance concerning our overwintering Blackcaps. But ... he totally failed to recognise my photo of Nick Riddiford which I always carry with me just in case. Aha ! And now ... the music spot ..... Here's the intro to that rather ambitious thing in a long-forgotten article in BB ........ it all started at post 681 ... that's 684 - 681 posts ago .... =3. Well, here's one of the "illuminating" tables in the sad/said article .... I'll let you "think" about all that for a while ..... ... and while you are "thinking", here's some music .... By the way ... after close study of that "table", I've realised that I seem to live
........ .......... ...... .... .. .. ↓ "elsewhere." BAH ! I'll tell you about that table soonish ..... I want you to pick holes in it first. ( There is a relevant song for that sentence .... I'll have to manufacture another scenario to fit it in ) As you all know from post 665, Derwent May of The Times has won my coveted and illustrious " Worst Newspaper Nature Column" award .... and lots of readers have asked for more ... I'm not sure why, but I am their obedient servant .... so I have scrabbaged through more dustbins and found these gems of ,er, genius... Here he tells us all about bhgs and, of course, earwigs .... and, just saying, how do we know that the bhgs are " screeching at each other" ? They might be screeching because they like screeching .... or they might, obviously, be trying to communicate with us .. a sort of giant " feed me" cry for help. Then again, flying might be very painful for them. We can't go about making willy-nilly assumptions about bird behaviour you know. ..and even more exciting, we learn that Gt. Spots hammer on trees with their beaks, rather than, say, their tails. We also learn that the Honeysuckle is included in both Tree guides and Shrub guides. Blimey ... what a disgraceful waste of paper. And ink. What we really want to know is, do they always wind round things the same way ? And if so, why. And .. are there some plants that are slap in the middle ground between Shrubs and Trees, and aren't in any book at all ? Nobody's going to buy a book called ,er, " The Observer's Book of Plants somewhere in between Shrubs and Trees." Here we go ..... " In Between Days" ...... |
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October 2022
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