BOU to 'stump' the cheating birder

"Mr Gatting, I must insist that you remove the Olive-backed Pipit from your list. You were clearly still eating a cheese and pickle sandwich in the dressing room at the time."

In a move that has sent shockwaves through the birding community, the BOU has revealed that it intends to implement new technology to address the perennial problem of stringing in birding. After studying the 'third' umpire arrangement adopted by some cricketing authorities, a spokesman from Britain's premier birding gestapo said "It is time we smoked the charlatans out of birding. They are cheating scum and they need to be exposed as such."

Although they will not be drawn on specifics, we at North Downs and beyond believe that the following plans are being considered:

*All birders to wear specially adapted spectacles that are fitted with 'actual vision' camcorders. Any birder claiming a lifer will have to submit the footage of the event for a panel of experts to assess whether or not they have truly seen enough of the bird.

*Ankle-tags to be mandatory so that the exact GPS reading of the whereabouts of a birder can be cross-checked against a claimed rarity sighting. This will stop birders claiming a Pacific Swift over Cley when they are, in fact, at a Little Chef in Stevenage.

*All birders to undertake a lie detector test to re-evaluate all past sightings. This has prompted a response from the UK400 Club, claiming that such an act will necessitate them rebranding as the UK325 Club

*Two appeals (in a calendar year), will be allowed by any birder who believes that the BOU have unfairly docked them of a bird. A special panel of 'crusty experts' will be wheeled out to view line-ups of birders who are contesting such old time rarities as Houbara Bustard, Brown Thrasher and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. A police artist will be on hand to illustrate the claimants 'as they might have looked' at the time of the rarities appearance.

A spokesman from Littlestone has commented: "It is about time that these birding parasites, liars and cheats were run out of birding. Just don't question me about my Bimaculated Lark on Scilly, or the Rufous-sided Towhee at Spurn. I was there... or at least in a pub nearby. Close enough to claim the little buggers."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more