This is the next in my famous " The Worst" series .... we've had the worst bird book for young people, the worst " big UK year" book and the worst "Newspaper Nature Notes". But today we're having The Worst "World Big Year" ..... and there it is ..... I really didn't like this book at all. Not only is is FAR TOO LONG, it's also in VERY SMALL print. To me, it was just an endless stream of flights, hire cars, expensive meals, billions of "local guides", birds ticked and another bird ticked and then three more birds ticked, more meals, more cars, more flights, more people, more local experts to lead them to the birds ... and there was reams and reams of totally nothing-to-do-with-anything pointless sidelines that just made the book longer and longer. It all reeked of money, privilege, more money ...... it got on my nerves. Have I mentioned the tiny print ? It made "The Big Year" that I wrote about a few posts ago seem almost like a trip to the local park. And I'm not the only person who didn't like it. Here's what the two Amazon reviewers had to say ... Person A .... I have had this for a couple of weeks. After I started it I feared the worst, and now I think I'm not going to make it. "We went to place {a} and we met person {b} with whom we saw {d,e,f} and {anecdote} happened. After this our total was {x}. Repeat. Sorry, I love birds and I love travel, but even though I can share the experiences of scoring, dipping, and any number of birding-related {anecdote} I now know that I can't share those things on a loop at the pace of a book. I suspect the book's biggest value to me is that I also now know I probably couldn't enjoy what the authors did either, much as it might appeal at first sight - so I have that to thank them for at least. It all became less meaningful as time went on, as I suspect it might in reality (for me). I also know that if you are going to do it then cultivating professional and personal relationships for a while before the attempt will probably make or break the effort. I enjoyed some of it, but I couldn't take all of it. Person B .... I found this book annoying at times especially when there were inaccuracies. For instance Laguna Medina in Andalucia not far from where I live, was incorrectly spelled. At one stage the maths was incorrect for how many birds remained to be seen. From memory, something like 600 birds remained, but several pages and birds later this figure was now approx 1500 - the correct figure! Even a non birding editor should have spotted that error! However I did not do as one German birding friend did and throw the book in the bin saying "Anybody with two hands and a pair of binoculars could have done the same!" Instead I lent it to my husband, no longer an enthusiastic travelling birder, who said that it made him want to leap on a plane to return to some of his favourite birding spots. As he flatly refuses to do this normally - I travel alone to go birding without a tour company to show me the birds - the book obviously has succeeded on one level. If you are an experienced, hardcore (!) birder, this is probably not for you. Those of you who have birded their locations will notice how many birds they failed to see. Evidence of their lack of initiative was the morning when there was a powercut and so they couldn't charge their recorder for "playback" which in their eyes meant they couldn't go birdwatching!! As somebody who birdwatches without "playback" although I have been known to "pish", this just about summed up their reliability on being shown almost every one of their 4000 birds!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One thing I don't know is ,,, is that the only " World Year Tick-Fest Book" ? If it is, it's also the best one. Which would be a bit odd. And ... that was the book that had the FORTY SPOTTED PARDALOPE in it ! Here's the links to some of my previous "Worst Book" selections...
642-the-worst-bird-book-in-the-universe.html 644-the-worst-bird-book-in-the-universe-part-2.html 659-the-worst-foreign-bird-guide.html 665-the-worst-nature-newspaper-column.html
0 Comments
Here's a dizzying snap of our Eucalyptus ..... plus rat-proof feeder. Yesterday was a total washout ... rain belted down most of the day, and on top of that, we had fierce winds as well. It got dark really early too, just to rub it in. The only decent thing happened at 0850 ... a male Sparrowhawk landed on our Eucalyptus for about 5 minutes. How it managed to hang on at all I don't know. The branches were bucking and bronco-ing like mad in the gustygale ! That's about a twice-a-year occurrence. Maybe thrice or froth or, stretching it a bit, firfth. Once it had gone .... I wondered how many species I've "had" on there . As for mammals, rat and cat spring to mind. We've had Tawny Owls on/in it...... a few Bramblings .... plenty of Jays and Gt. spots, and all the usual garden stuff....and over the day, in between doing thousands of other things, I tried to cobble together a makeshift list ... but there's loads of notional holes full of " not-sures". I like the idea of "notional holes." After the two consecutive fierce winters about 10 years ago, the top bits died off ... they're still there, but there's no leaves. That has turned it into a good lookout point for all the birds in the street. Anyhow, I'm going to dwell on that "Eucalyptus List" a bit and see if I can confirm some of those Notional Holes. And talking of Notional,here they are with the lovely " Nobody else will be there." On post 667 I showed you all the birds with numbers in their name. Well, all the birds I could find. The lowest-numbered birds started with "half". And the highest numbered bird started with "12". And there were 29 of them in total. At the time, I did point out that I might easily have missed a few ... it was a long and tedious job finding the little bastards. But yesterday I was "tidying up" my "office" under the strict supervision of The Significant Otter when I found a book ..... and in that book I was astoundly-startled by one of the birds in it ... .... it started with ... amazingly ... ............ record-shatteringly ...... FORTY !!!!!!! Yes ... the 30th bird in the list should have been ...wait for it ... Forty-spotted Pardalote ! So .. I'm going to creep sheepishly back to said post 667 and slyly tack it on to the end of the list and tidy the rest of it up so that nobody will notice. What I mustn't do, of course, is write about it later on. And I mustn't grovel about trying to make excuses. And who would have expected a huge leap from 12 ... the previous "best".... to the totally ridiculous 40. What's next ? The 347-striped Arklestrog ? Anyway, that's my top tactic ... nip back and change it shiftily/surreptitiously ! And then it will look like this ...... But there's one mystery left ... what was that " Pardalope-infested" book ?
So ... we've decided that that paper about " Which way round ( left or right) do Black Guillemots hold their fish ... is not exactly "vital" and almost approaches the boundaries of uselessness. If you are a newcomer to my systematic destruction of said paper, you might wish to read the two previous posts, numbered, oddly, 710 and 711. OK ... this time we're going to see what PJE has to say about the results .... So ..there we are then. Now we know. And now we're all looking forward to the hinted-at future studies ... aren't we ? But while we wait with bated breath, probably exhaling in a non-directional manner, here's some more "relevant" studies ..... Honestly folks ...what a load of old crap !! But I suppose it keeps somebody or other busy. Here's that Contents List I put on the previous post ... see previous post ...... if you're the sort of swotty person that wants to know all about it ...... and your task was to pick out the most uselessly gormless one ..... Well, it was pretty obvious which one was the most pointless load of old guff .... .... it was the one about which way round Black Guillemots carry their fish ... ..do they have the heads on the right, or the left. ..... vital ...er .... stuff ! Obviously, you'll want all the details ... here's the intro ... we like an intro .. ............. I hope you're all paying attention ..... it's hard work is this .... I expect you'll be wanting a Table now .... we like a Table, do we not .... .... I hope you've all written that down in your notebooks .... there's another Table coming up ... and there might be a test ... so no slacking ! Isn't it exciting !!! And next time I'll show you what old PJE thought about it all . What we really need now is a song about Tables ... obviously, I've had to wade through 1000's of them, but here's one ..... I hear that the emperor of China used to wear iron shoes with ease
We are the tablecloth and also the table also the fable of the dancing leaves The new moon is rising the axe of the thunder is broken As never was, not since the flood nor yet since the world began The new moon is shining, the angels are washing their windows Above the years whose jumble sale goes spinning on below Ask the snail beneath the stone, ask the stone beneath the wall Are there any stars at all Like an eagle in the sky, tell me if air is strong In the floating pan pipe victories of the golden harvest Safe in the care of the dear moon The new moon is rising the eyelid of god is approaching The humane train the skating raining travelling voice of certainty The new moon is shining the harmonious hand is now holding Lord Krishna's ring The eagle's wing the voice of mother everything Ask the snail beneath the stone, ask the stone beneath the wall Are there any stars at all Like an eagle in the sky, tell me if air is strong In the floating palaces of the spinning castle May the fire king's daughter bring water to you ( By the way, I hope you're all au fait with that "G" in Table 1.) Some research topics can actually turn our avian theories upside-down ...... As we all know, hard-working orthiogloomysts are constantly pushing back the boundaries of our knowledge about our dear dicky birds. I mean, someone's got to do it ... and somebody has ! Here's what I found in a venerable copy of Bird Study ..... which one do you think is the total stinker/heap of crap/waste of time and paper in amongst that lot ? Keen orthonoddlists might like to go a step further and rank those papers in tripe order. It would be a sort of " race to the bottom" as we say these days. I will " fill you in" with my "ha'penny-worth" in my next " farticle" Meantime, a rubbish song, but it does supply you with a tiny sort of clue ..... Next time, I'll tell you which is, in my opinion, the crappiest harticule, and why ......
And while we're at it, I've written before about "research papers" and I've actually remembered where one of them is ... here's the l-i-n-k ... 254-the-best-bits.html While we were 'aving us breakfast this morning there was a huge kerfuffle/commotion/racket up in the treetops out the back. Said contretemps involved 4 magpies and about 30 Jackdaws all flying around in an agitated manner and chacking and cackling at max volume. And ..they were all looking down. At something. One of my many "Rules of Birding" is .... " .. if you come across a group of birds making a racket of a directional nature ...around a bush, along a hedge etc ..there's probably a predator about. " * Many's the time I've tracked down owls in that way. And I'm sure you have too. The obvious cause for this morning's bit of mobbing is cats. There's loads of cats around our house ... but they're so common and obvious I think it's unlikely that they were the cause. And owls would be unlikely too, as all the birds were looking straight down ... and over the last couple of years we've had hardly any owls at all. There was a Kestrel around the house yesterday .. that's a possible. And we get the occ Sparrowhawks and Buzzards over ... even the odd Peregrine. Plus the even odder Barns and Littles. [And the single record of a SEO ... identified by its reflection in the garden pond.] [ How about that ! Mr. G was there as my witness.] 69-unusual-ways-to-id-a-bird-well-two-birds-actually.html I had a stroll down the lane at the back but found nothing. So .. I'm guessing fox. But I wouldn't put a tenner on it. Why, dear readers, didn't I take any snaps ? Well, I simply couldn't find my camera. It'll turn up in the fullness of time. Hey ... Water Rail's a possibility. We've only "had" one in't garden .... once in a lifetime or what ? Here we go then ... how many pairs of binoculars have you got ? Don't worry ... if you've only got just the one, that's fine. Anyway, owning up, I've got quite a few ... 5½... of varying quality. [½] My rubbishest one is just" living" at my house .. my sister brought it round for me to fix it .... but somehow I haven't got round to it yet. It was full of some sort of flaky white powder. There's some of the bits up there. So I don't need to tell you what sort it is. [1½] My next rubbishest one was got from a junk shop .. £2 ... and I keep it in the boot of the car i-c-o-e .. in case of emergencies. And it doesn't matter if it gets nicked. [2½] The next one is a dinky pair of Russian bins that I used to keep in the boot before I got those even worse ones. Helios 10 x 25 Field 5.5° , 96m/1000m Very pocketable. [3½] Now to "proper" bins ... up in't office where I write and/or think. or vice versa, I have a pair of Viking Traveller 8x21s ...... £20 in a sale .... they're good for what they are ... and pocketable [4½] My almost-best ones... a fine but hefty pair of Swift Audubons ... 8.5 x 44 Extra-Wide Field .... 445ft @ 1000 yards and a very bright image. Wizard ! They are by the settee at the huge back window. I think they've sulked a bit since the next ones arrived .... [5½] My very best ones are my wonderful Zeiss Dialyt T*P* 7x42B's. They're the ones that went to Lithuania for a week and Bologne for 2½ hours. They're on the top of the cupboard so I won't forget to take them out with me wherever I go. I wonder what its " list" is ? So ..what about you ? Any advance on 5½ ? At any rate, this has given me the opportunity to put this fine DCFC song on here ... Transatlanticism ... I need you so much closer ! Relevant or what ? Oh no ! Another of those blasted frontispieces .... bah ! The idea is, which book has this as its frontispiece ? I reckon most of you lot have got this book. Well, I have anyway. I will do that thing where I stick the "answer" on the end of a post from the distant past .... here's the l-i-n-k to it, assuming you haven't found out for yourselves ..... by the way, I think it would be sensible to spell l-i-n-k like that to help people remember what it means. r h o And you could spell t w like that. Ok then ...here's the l-i-n-k 303-a-missing-book-from-the-12-birding-bookshelf.html I didn't think much of this "twitching" article in't paper ...... But rather than telling you what I thought of as " duff bits" , you can find some for yourselves and I'll show you mine after the "inevitable" music ... actually it's more inevitable that you might expect. Righto then ... here's that inevitable music I promised you ... So ... what did I not like ... (?) [a] ..the writer seems to have mixed up his twitching and his birdwatching. [b] ... I don't think much of the Duke of Cambridge swanning around the world at our expense and then gripping us lot in the UK off with binoculars that we've paid for. So there. [c] What's all this tripe about twitching needing " patience" ??? I would have thought that impatience was its hallmark myself. [d] At least Morris Dancing is a lot better than Boris-dancing .... yuck ! |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
|