Fake Bird News anyone?

 

The Angus Glens Moorland Group need not only to go to Specsavers but also back to school (where I imagine they might spend quite a lot of time in detention). Their maths, English, science and logic are all in need of some education.

Raptor Persecution UK have quite rightly taken the mickey out of the AGMG’s ‘counts’ but they have only skimmed over the subject.  Here is a link to the claimed bird lists.

First, it’s a bit odd that the data were collected by a bunch of German hunters from Game Conservancy Deutschland.  Does the UK not have enough of its own shooters to big up our own grouse moors (and housing estates).  I guess after Brexit, when the Portugese waiters, the Polish plumbers and the Latvian fruit pickers all head home then so will the German bird surveyors and we’ll be left in the happy position of seeing the bird records from our own, much-loved Andy Richardson,  Gethin Jones and Bert Burnett.

Some of the apparent misidentifications might be mistranslations, if one is being generous, and we should be generous. So perhaps the Black Redstart on the list was simply a Common Redstart – that’s entirely possible (it’s also possible it was a birding error).  Maybe the Brown Owl was a Tawny or Long-eared Owl (it can’t be a Short-eared for that is already on the list) but it’s difficult to know. Yarrelli (sic) Wagtail is an odd but recognisable way of naming our own Pied Wagtail (Motacilla alba yarrellii) but then you can’t also have White Wagtail (Motacilla alba alba) which is the continental race of the same species (and would be a pretty decent find on a grouse moor in Scotland). Western March Harrier, Donnock and Carrin Crow are all, presumably mistypings.

The claimed Marsh Tit is a long way out of its Atlas range .  It would be rude to say it’s a stringy record but it would be good to see a photograph or description of this bird – or independent verification.

Jack Snipe? Interesting record!  May we see a photo please? Or a corpse?

The claim was that 103 species were found to be thriving on Glenogil Estate this May – thriving!  Given the track record it is possible that ‘thriving’ is a mis-spelling of ‘living’ but even that may be an exaggeration.

The Glenogil website has species lists for three years where in 2015 there were 63 species, 92 in 2016 , 90 in 2017 and in 2018 the unlisted but claimed 103. I look forward to seeing the species list for 2018 one day and very much hope to see how this list keeps expanding. It seems a hyperbolic rise, in all senses of the word.

It’s easy to make fun of this stuff from a vaguely informed point of view. Any half-awake birder would look at what the AGMG puts out on birds and begin to doubt not only the veracity of the records but also the attention to detail of the group as a whole.  What with a Black-winged Stilt image being used to illustrate a Redshank, some extra-limital Marsh Tits, a list of odd names for birds and a few more mis-spellings thrown in for good measure  (and the Golden Plover claims) it would be hard to think that this group of rural experts knows much about birds.  Far from giving the impression of working gamekeepers who know about the wildlife around them with the experience of a lifetime of getting up at dawn and pausing to enjoy the fauna and flora around them, we gain the impression of a group of folk who know so little, about birds at least, that they cannot string a moderately convincing case together even when they try.

But the general public, who have never heard of a Marsh Tit and who won’t know that 86 species of raptor is double the number found in the whole of Europe, will glance at this nonsense and take it at face value. We’ve seen that Fake News works, so might Fake Bird News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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