It's more a measure of awesomeness rather than area. Might have to make
a proper scale of this one day...
Cheers!
Tony
On 04/01/2013 00:40, Dave Torr wrote:
Ah - a new measure - the milliWerribee! Werribee used to be just over
10,000 hectares so a milliWerribee would be 10 hectares I guess, but
now chunks have been removed for the regional park and housing will be
less - so it may not be a fixed area!
On 4 January 2013 10:35, Tony Keene <
<>> wrote:
Julian, I agree - it's certainly different and at the same time
the same. The same hours spent scoping scrubby patches in all
forms of weather (and yes, you can get badly sunburnt in the UK in
the summer. Sometimes.), the same sorts of people from the
lightest of robin-strokers through to the most aspie of twitchers,
the same highs and lows of new birds and dips.
Even if they are mostly small and brown...
Moving back to the UK, it's both lovely to see old favourites like
Common Shelduck and Bohemian Waxwings and at the same time a
little of an anti-climax compared to the first few months in
Australia where almost everything was a tick.
The major difference is the number of people: RSPB Bowling Green
Marsh was heaving on 1st January with loads of people starting
their year lists. I must have passed upwards of a hundred birders
on the way between the river and the reserve and there was a
constant turnover in the hide, all in a site worth about 150
milliWerribees.
I suspect I shall rarely have the glorious solitude of an
Australian reserve, but at least I won't be short of second
opinions on ID in the field...
Cheers,
Tony
On 03/01/2013 21:32, Julian B wrote:
Yes, Philip, the 16 500 [550 x 30] was an absurd exaggeration,
as is the oft
touted fallacy that there are few or no birds in Britain. I
had a teaching
colleague who, on returning from a year's teacher exchange in
London,
bemoaned the lack of British birds: sparrows and starlings
with a few feral
pigeons to spare. Puzzled, I asked exactly where had she gone
in search of
birds and was flabbergasted to learn that apart from one trip
to Stratford
to see a Shakespearean drama she had never set foot beyond The
Big Smoke.
Nor was that the thrust of my point. Numbers are irrelevant
in this debate.
What does it matter whether Britain has 50 or 500 fewer
species that
Australia? Australia is 30-times the size of Britain and has
habitat types
[e.g. deserts, rainforests] not found in Britain. No one
doubts that
Australia has more bird species than a small European outpost
and therefore
all those defensive parries [e.g. lack of birders makes it
difficult to
discover the true Australian total; more than half of the
British list (?
Evidence based or another stab in the dark?) consists of rare
vagrants] were
unnecessary and rather missed my point by the proverbial
country mile.
I was simply trying to dispel the seemingly widely held
antipodean view that
there are only a handful of rather drab and lacklustre avian
species in
Britain.
Given some of the responses [both in this public forum and emailed
privately] it appears to me that a number of correspondents
are in danger of
comparing apples with oranges - equating Australian
birdwatchers [birders]
with British "twitchers".
Twitching is not unique to Britain and alien to Australia -
and anyone who
doubts that was obviously not present when the Blue Rock
Thrush arrived at
the "Devil's Kitchen" on the Sunshine Coast. And I do seem to
recall one
rather well-known former Queensland politician/birder dropping
everything to
race off in pursuit of a reported Great Reed-Warbler at Port
Macquarie.
Nor. of course, are all British birders mad twitchers. Lee
Evans does not
hold sway over all! Penny gives a fine example of this.
I would add my own contribution. Back in the early 1990s,
having to return
to Britain on family matters, I took the opportunity to chase
down that
elusive Puffin. On arriving at South Stack [Anglesey, North
Wales] I was
amazed to see the number of family groups enjoying a picnic
while birding.
I fell into conversation with one such family and moments
later their
14-year old son [along with the nine-year old daughter] called
me over to
their telescope in which they had a Puffin!
Fay and I hail from Staffordshire where our local patches included
Blithfield Reservoir [for which read "dam"] and Cannock Chase
[a "chase" is
a large woodland area not owned by the Crown]. This was our
bread-and-butter birding.
Yes, we twitched on occasions. We were there for the
White-winged Black
Tern [a Staffordshire rarity]. We were among the crowd for
the Salisbury
White Stork as we were for the Red Phalarope BUT these were
anomalies. Our
birding consisted of regular counts at the Doxey Marshes, the
Uttoxeter
Quarry, at Belvide Reservoir, etc.
It is surely an exercise in futility to maintain that it is
better or worse
birding in Australia than in Britain [or vice verse]. The
birding is
DIFFERENT.
Here in Australia you can attend your local patch, any patch,
and be largely
confident of the birds you can record. Yes, there are always the
exceptions: the Javan Pond Heron of Darwin; the Black-headed
Gull at Broome
Sewage Treatment Plant; the Franklin Gull of Salisbury Plains;
etc. But
they are random; there appears to be no rhyme or reason behind
their sudden
and unexpected arrival on these shores. You wouldn't hold
your breath
awaiting the next one.
In Brittan, on the other hand, especially at both the Spring
and Autumn
passage seasons, one can be reasonably confident that
something strange,
rare of unusual will appear somewhere, either from across the
Atlantic or
overland from the farthest reaches of Siberia.
In part it is that expectation that fuels many twitchers or
simply warms the
cockles of the most humble patch birder.
Other debateable points have been put forward in this thread
but my final
[public] word is simply an apology to Ed. I seem to have
usurped your
innocent parting quip to a fellow Pom and birder and turned it
into a
diarrheic comedy of mostly misused English grammar and
lacklustre logic. I
would make it up to you should you ever find yourself in my
neck of the
woods [the South Burnett, some 280km NW of Brisbane] with time
to watch [or
twitch] a few of my local birds.
Julian
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