An albatross is a score on a hole that is 3 strokes less than
par for the hole. In the US this is more often known as a ‘double
eagle’ (scored by Peter Lonard in a recent tournament), being another
example of diverging usage, although not as bad as ‘table (a document)’
or ‘fulsome’, where meanings on each side of the Atlantic are the
opposite of one another.
This reminds me to report that I could find no sign of the Powerful
Owl this morning. If it is to be refound Canberra birdwatchers might need
to reverse their natural tendency to concentrate their numbers at the most specific
point possible, and fan out a bit.
From: Philip Veerman
[
Sent: Thursday, 17 May 2007 2:25 PM
To: Bill & Jenny Handke;
Subject: [canberrabirds] Raven caching a golfball
Bill's
story and theory about possible preferences of golf balls, sort of suggests (to
me) the thought that what one raven might do, they all would do similarly and
that they may or may not show preference for a particular colour. It ain't
necessarily so. Bill's story can also be interpreted that the raven could
not carry two balls together and preferred to retain the one it had already
been trying to crack, before starting on a new one. I'd suggest there is a lot
of randomness in this kind of behaviour. In the long term view, round white egg
sized objects that are not food or stones are something new. The birds may have
variable levels of ability to learn but still have a long way to go.
Is
this why golfers use words: birdie, eagle and albatross (whatever that
is)?
Sent: Thursday, May 17,
2007 10:41 AM Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Raven caching a
golfball
Ravens
stealing golf balls have been the bane of golfers for many a year. There
used to be 3 ravens that infuriated golfers at Tathra for many years. On
one occasion my wife hit her best drive for ages with an old dirty ball.
A raven flew down to her ball with a white clean ball in its beak. It
drop its clean ball, went over to Jenny's dirty ball, walked back to its
ball in disgust and flew off with its clean ball, leaving my wife's ball where
it landed. I concluded from this that ravens didn't want dirty
— and by extension — coloured balls that were not akin to the
colour of birds eggs, so after the game went and bought a dozen coloured
balls: bright yellow, pink and orange. Next game, on the very first tee I
hit a longish drive down the fairway with a bright orange ball. Before I
had time to put my club away, a raven flew down, picked up my ball and shot
through. So much for that theory. But it needn't be all bad.
On another occasion, a raven picked up my ball from a drive and started flying
towards me. I ran towards it with club aloft, it did a u-turn and flew
towards the green, dropping the ball some seventy metres closer to hole.
Naturaly I took the next shot from there!
Later
on when we did landcare work in the area we came across "nests" of
golf balls — many dozens of them. No doubt there were some very
puzzled birds.
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