Just my opinion.
Last night’s COG meeting featured maybe the strangest talk to COG I have encountered in 30 + years. I guess memorable is good and it is something we probably could all relate to. Complete with “colourful” language to make a lorikeet blush
(well sort of). We were launched like a rocket by
Dr Gráinne Cleary into a history from all over the place about household and farm related bird feeding and results from a survey, I don’t think with any introductory explanation as to where the survey information comes from. Admittedly I had not read
the intro given in the November Gang-gang. I think that was necessary to make sense of it. It took me a while to realise that when she was talking about the feeding of birds in earlier times was related to that the birds were agricultural pests (I think these
were the words used) and thus should be encouraged, she was consistently omitting an important word, that was that the birds were agricultural pests controls.
Sure results were of interest but it is hardly surprising that birds of different feeding groups may respond differently to provision of food or water. Also that this may well vary geographically and in time. What I did not follow was the
presentation of what could be called graphs (any numbers can be made into graphs), in which the different groups were linked with lines of data, although the x axis was not sequential data at all, it was simply different groups of birds and could have been
arranged in any other sequence and thus look quite different. My point being it is fine to present the different groups as comparisons but linking the blocks could create impression which have no real basis.
I wondered as to why was it surprising that in Europe small birds should show more alarm at the presence of a woodpecker, which we were told was a nest predator (I did not know that), than at an introduced Turtle-Dove? I was lost at that
point too.
I have found the website about the study here, which is much easier to follow. https://csdb.org.au/feedingbirds/home.aspx.
Other information on the subject is this item:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/seeds-of-destruction/5416254
The issue of feeding birds is certainly not clear cut.
Philip
