Kev's Christmas Bird Count: Day Seven - some left-overs (and some Christmas scraps)

My garden is rubbish. It's a yard. It did attract birds once, when there were orchards over the road, but th ey're a building site at the moment. In some 38 years of calling it my backyard, 2021 is the first year I've not seen a Blue Tit land in it.

Landing is key for RSPB's big garden birdwatch. 2 rules. (1) Count is exactly an hour. (2) Count everything that lands. RSPB gurus will do the rest, adjust your species tallies based on how many times the same Blue Tit visits the same garden in a 60 minute period and work out the national result.

Over the pond? They don't want you counting the same bird twice. So, you record the maximum present at any one time. And you can sit watching as long as you like. You just have to record exactly how long and tell them that as well.

45 minutes gone and nothing but Sparrows. Peak 12. Landed 43. I might just close my eyes for five minutes, then do a final 15. No harm in that.

Just five minutes. Just fi.. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Nooooo! We really can't do circles. Nooooo! The Hoo crew would hate it. They'd want the whole peninsula in, so would centre it on Northward Hill. That way they'd get the off-Peninsula bits of the Medway towns they've always claimed because someone once lived close-by, but not quite on, the geographic peninsula.

Nooooo! They'd get parts of Essex as well, but they've never really bothered chatting much with them. Okay, there was a collaborator once at Cliffe who swapped messages with East Tilbury, but they put a stop to that. (I wonder if they've ever realised the real reasons behind Essex surveyors working parts of Hoo in recent years, finding all the goodies. Come the revolution..

Ohh, and what if the South Swale gang wanted all their patches in their circle? If they based it on Oare, they'd have all the juiciest bits of Sheppey too. They wouldn't want Sheerness, no birds there. They could leave it out. Heck all that'd be left of my Medway circle would become the perineum, separating the..

Wake up Kev(!) You're having a nightmare(!)

Phew, just a dream. Of course. All silly stuff. That'd never happen in America, would it?

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Want to see our map of New York circles looking just like this north Kent nightmare? You just have to read up on the The Queens / Brooklyn / south Nassau / Lower Hudson Turf Wars.
Sure, a bit tongue-in-cheek - but they based the Godfather movies on these wars. Bigly Fact. 

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We Brits are so lucky. The proud institution that is the Ordnance Survey gave us our beautiful standardised maps and we are used to squares; 1 km squares, 2 x 2 km squares (tetrads), 10 km squares. We've built our surveying around such things. Sure, things like Birdtrack now allow you to draw your own oddly shaped recording areas, they've probably got a stats wizard of Gandalf level skills locked in the Nunnery who sorts things out regarding number crunching, but we've got squares. No arguments now.

Squares and County lines? Ah, well, yes, 10 kms could be trouble but much of the standardised surveying for the BTO Atlas were at tetrad level of course, with peace treaties negotiated by allocating each to a county controller based on "pragmatic reasons". We Brits are so reasonable. (Yeah, right, just listen to the rumblings from Kent (by Vice-county or postal address ) birders living within the London Bird Recording area. Especially when a Kent (Kent Recording area) goes on to tell 'em they're not in Kent.

I might just try something square-shaped next Christmas.

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That's it. The seven days are up. I haven't really gone into the results in any detail. That wasn't the point of these blogs. I slowly reduced the birding narrative as well, not the real point. This has been about ponderings the differences, working out why we don't never had a CBC here, wondering if any elements are worth borrowing.

I do think they've got one really big jump on us. Fun. The team element (turf wars aside) had both competitiveness and camaraderie from the start, and now with added science. Data analysis was bolted on after the games started, the fun was already to the fore.

We Brits might believe we have many more surveys going on that a CBC event isn't needed. But we as individuals often let our British reserve get in the way of taking part (and sometimes, sad to say, some in our British Birding Class system still like to not let some join the club. Standards, don't cha know).

But our friends over the pond don't care. They mix it up and go have fun together.

There's an entry-level advertising rule that says "Sell the sizzle, not the sausage." If someone's never had a sausage before, and you try to convince them it's great by waving an uncooked one at them, they really won't bite. But sell 'em the sizzle, let them smell the cooking, see the juices, offer a taster.. Mmmmmmmmm sausage.

If a county wants to avoid a couple of extra years of Atlas fieldwork by having enough surveyors from the start, if a WeBS manager want a fit team squad with substitutes available for sickness/hols, you really do have to show birders these things are fun!

The clock is probably ticking for that next national Atlas. Here on the Medway, the alarm has been ringing for WeBS. No better time to try getting birders together (if only Covid will bugger off!!)

Enjoy your Christmas birding, however you do it. (And go Manatees!!)

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"Mmmmmmmmm Sausage Roller"