Southwest England floods while Environment Agency frets about birds. They knew they needed to update flood prevention infrastructure but the bureaucrats stalled and obstructed while they studied the effect on birds. Now it’s too late. Everybody’s underwater. We see your birds, Brits, and raise you one spotted owl and a delta smelt.
This post was last modified on January 26, 2021
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Those who may have an interest in the prognostications of the Met Office will, no doubt, recall their recent proclamation that "within 50 years the UK will be much warmer and drier, and will be experiencing a Mediterranean climate".
I can tell you, that living as I do in south central France, that those in the UK are welcome to our "Mediterranean climate", which, at the moment, is probably just as wet and windy as theirs.
To those who continue to believe that humans are accidentally changing the climate, and can miraculously change it back again (to what, is anyone's guess), and who fervently still believe that due to the presence of humans the planet is heating catastrophically (and will continue to do so), I would say "you silly buggers are completely off your respective trolleys". And that would include HRH prince Numpty of Wales.
Its a liberal fallacy that we can contorl things like the weather. THose of us who believe in intelligent design realize there is very little we can control on that scale.
Oh, this is already being hailed as more proof of Global Warming (TM).
Next up, more obstruction, until they can find a way to blame it on "Climate Change", and try to use it as a reason for a Carbon Exchange.
Meanwhile the poor farmers will still be flooded out.
But we've got the water-voles, the dragon-flies and the WATER-BIRDS to consider yet. Humans don't matter.
Water birds especially irk me. We have this damn migrating bird act (don't ask me the proper name of it) that prevents any rational culling of the duck, swan, and goose populations, with the result that North America is steadily being buried in goose shit. There is no pond left anywhere where a human being can sit and contemplate nature - like Henry David Thoreau did, to be inspired to write Walden - because to sit anywhere near a pond or lake in the 21st century means sitting in a decade's worth of goose shit.
And now? And now? And now my new next door neighbor turns out to be of that ill-bred ignorant tribe of mankind known as the Inveterate Bird Feeders. What am I going to do? She seems like a nice lady, but this is lakefront property - I can't let her draw more geese onto the shoreline. She'll turn the area into a goose sewage plant.
It won't work, but you could point out that bird experts report feeding the birds is a bad thing. Instead, they encourage planting native plants that provide some food, but don't spoil the birds for their usual hunting and gathering behaviours.
Brass signaling canon, every 4 hours until she gets the message?
The solution at our fishing camp is a 22 caliber pellet gun, I make a mean duck pizza,
Seriously, am I twisted for watching those big fat geese waddling around at the parks and thinking about how I'd cook them?
You'd be twisted if you didn't.
Have you ever tried to putt a golf ball with 400 piles of goose shit on the green?
Yeah, and God forbid you go after the rude critters with a golf club. A couple decades ago some guy down in the Battle Creek area got mad when a goose honked at him in the middle of his putt and went after the bird with his putter. He ended up in jail.
I have another feather to pick with geese. Years ago when I was reading water meters for extra money, I was chased out of a yard and down the street by a guard goose. A white domestic one that the homeowner kept as a pet. The whole damn neighborhood was laughing at me. I'm not ashamed I ran - they come at you with their bills four feet in front of them right at crotch level and making an infernal racket as they attack. It's a wonder I didn't leave my own droppings in the yard.
Geese make great guard animals. They're mean and irritable and its really hard to get them to back off. Good thing you ran; they can actually do some damage if they catch you!
Yes, they really throw down.
One golf course I used to play hired a guy with Australian Shepherds to chase them off the course. After a few weeks of the dogs going after them, they found somewhere else to crap.
LOL. I learned a sure-fire trick to keep geese off your shoreline: tent stakes along the lake edge with a taut string between them about two inches off the ground. If the geese can't waddle out of the lake onto the grass without tripping, they grow disgusted and leave. I can handle their dirty looks as they depart.
And yet they put bird-o-matics up all along the coast.
Go figure.