Not BB i birding humour

What a great pleasure this is, to invite myself to introduce the welcome rerun (Surely, totally unnecessary rehashing - ED) of Not BB, and to have this chance to reminisce about its rise and fall, which surely represented a golden era in British birding comedy. As my old friend Steve Hassles Holloway would say, "Halycon days."

While we planned our second trip to Beidaihe in China, Simon Stirrup, Dan Duff and I used to drive up to the Norfolk coast and chat about British Birds' penchant for letters about corpse-eating Turnstones, and articles like the renowned Toyland Story. What a lark it would be, we thought, to produce something wry, almost as wry as Private Eye was wry.

Of course, back in those days you could still get bread pudding at NancyBoy's, where you were often interrupted by the ringing of the nation's birdline. Those were indeed halycon times, when you took bird photos using proper cameras loaded with real, grainy film, A Man Called Roy was almost reinventing the grapevine, I had to wrestle with my scope just to open the thing. As I sat in my student house on warm evenings, typing Not BB on a friend's Amstrad, I (get on with it! - ED)
(Read on for Vol 1.)

feparation of Phyllofcopuf warblerf - G. White
Suppressors - is hanging the answer?
Product report - we drive the new Porsche from Porthgwarra to Golspie
Exclusive - Mafia and Masons connected with BBRC: ex-member tells all

Editorial

Last month was one of the worst on record for rarities. As a result, we have been forced to include material on wetland bird conservation, weather effects on bird migration and on changes in status and distribution of several woodland birds. We apologise for the frequent references in this month's issue to trash species such as  Swallows, Wood Warblers and Rooks.

Next month we return to the usual diet of rarities, grippers and waxy coat tests.

Was the Blacktoft Hudsonian Godwit Hudwiticus returnicus the same individual as the Exeter bird? 

Jeremy Lies, John Damnlies, and Sidney Statistics

(We publish this paper in response to letters from anxious birders wondering whether they wasted petrol money seeing the same bird twice - EDS)

The Hudwit which turned up for an extended stay in South Devon was an extremely valuable "blocking" tick for many of Britain's twitchers. Unfortunately much of the grip-value of this occurrence was destroyed by a second record over a year later. This paper will discuss the evidence on whether the original bird was responsible for this tactless repeat performance.

Dementiev and Gladkov (1969) have nothing to say about the Hudsonian Godwit. Statistical analysis of the two British records suggests that either one or two birds were involved - a histogram of the historical occurrence of this species in Britain is given below (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Occurrences of the Hudwit in Britain 

A Pargetter twin-sampling test was performed on the above data and showed that the same bird may well have been involved (P<0.2, X2=.956 where n=2). However, a D.I.M. Witted vagrancy-potential calculation using a McLauren convergence with a Lagrange floating multiplier (assuming average wind speed 26.52 great knots/16.3 milli-pratincoles, median migration bearing 23E, 109.8W, mean binocular rating 10x50 and average British list increment 5.513 species pa) is inconclusive.

The results are thus in broad agreement with the studies of Remige & Tertial (1984) and Tarsus & Culmen (1986) on the Bitish occurrences of the Green Heron Botulinus thorngumbaldensis and the Little Whimbrel Regrippus taffiensis. (That's enough bogus scientific bullshit - ED)