Very interesting. Estimates mentioned to me ranged
from a wary ‘0 – not starlings’ to ‘200-300’. It might or might not be
helpful if I told you that each of the first 4 coloured sections represents 50
birds:
I would think that very few people would know, intuitively,
what 200 birds ‘looks like’. Barbara P mentioned the semi-counting method
of counting 10 - then counting the number of tens. That
depends on having the flock in view for long enough. John Rawsthorne – an
old sheep-counter like a few others – said if it looks like 100 it’s probably
twice that number. That is, in a way, knowing what 200 ‘looks
like’ - it looks like 100. That kind of knowledge comes from
knowing at some stage the actual number of estimated quantities, so perhaps the
sheep counters have an advantage.
As a matter of interest there are 436 birds in each of these
pictures:
