Leg Rings……My Fevered Imagination…..Bots & A.I……
by Bernie Bell - 08:16 on 14 December 2025
Leg Rings….
…..for birds, that is.
On his constitutional on Friday afternoon, Mike picked up a bird’s leg-ring on the beach at the Bay of Hinderayre……
We were wondering – what kind of bird was it from? Should we let someone know about it as presumably the bird is dead and they might want that info. for their records?
There are various groups which ring birds, so it’s quite difficult to know who to report it to.
Mike knows more about that sorta thing than I do, so I asked him to elaborate about bird rings and ringing….
“On the beach at Hinderayre this afternoon I found a plastic bird ring, marked with three characters, FZT, black on white. Slight encrustations of marine tube worms show that it had been at sea for some time - at least some months, possibly longer. The ring is probably made from Darvic, a layered plastic material that can be engraved to show the colour of the lower layer (black, in this case) contrasting with a different colour of the top layer (white, in this case). The colour of the ring, the combination of engraved letters or digits and the leg to which the ring has been fitted all combine to provide a unique identifier - unique, that is, to a particular ringing scheme or research project and to the species.
Unlike with the traditional metal rings, these identifiers can easily be read by sight using a telescope or binoculars, providing a record of presence at a particular time and place during the lifetime of the bird - hugely valuable information for determining movement patterns and survival rates, and also informative about breeding success and interactions with other marked individuals.
In the absence of the bird itself, however, metal rings from national ringing schemes do have one big advantage in that their codes are completely unique. This means that the exact identity of the bird can be determined, including both species and the time and place of ringing. We will probably never know these things about FZT. Could it have been a goose? The diameter of the ring looks a bit slender for this. Maybe a large seabird such as a cormorant or one of the bigger species of gulls? Possibly, but we'll never know.
All we can know is that FZT was dead some time before I picked up the ring.”
We contacted the Orkney Bird Recorder, Steve Dudley, who sent a very helpful response suggesting that, depending on the internal diameter of the ring, it could be from a shag – it looked a bit small for a goose….
“Measure the ring and send all details to these people
https://www.ceh.ac.uk/our-science/projects/mapping-winter-distribution-seabirds
Steve”
And that’s…what we’ll do!
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My Fevered Imagination….
Following on from this, in my FB…
“Now then Ralph…..I was thinking….Bird ring..…Lobster tags…..
https://theorkneynews.scot/.../last-call-for-found-beach.../
Plastic-off-the-beach which tracks migration.
Your ‘ear tags’ piece….
https://x.com/rorkney_rr/status/1583914551208472577...
Hmmmmm.........”
Me & Mike were thinking of other plastic on the beach which tells that it’s travelled far ….fishing floats are the obvious ones. Also fish boxes, which often say ‘Property of’ and ‘Not for unauthorised use’. We then use them to plant herbs in.
Mike was saying that a piece of fish-box saying ‘Not for unauthorised use’ would be good in some kind of art-work – which would be un-authorised!
https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/07/18/it-doesnt-have-to-be-big-to-be-a-garden-idea-no-11/
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Bots & A.I……
Damn their eyes.
As my readers will know, I set up my blog on Spanglefish, having been advised that it was easy to use. That was so, but it being easy to use is because it’s quite basic and it can’t do some things which other sites can do. For example, some folk have said they’d like to sign up to have my blog sent to them automatically - but it doesn’t do that. I didn’t mind it being basic as I mainly do it because it gives me something to do when I can’t do much else and…I like doing it!
I did, however like to check the main statistics now and then. Last time I checked, I had 10, 660 readers.
On Friday 12 December I went to check and read the following message……
“As of December 2025, Spanglefish 2 no longer collect site statistics. This is due to the excess load caused to the server due to huge amounts of automated bot traffic, including AI learning tools.”
I’m writing this because to me, this is yet another way in which goddam Bots and goddam A.I. are messing with our lives and our activities.
Maybe a small thing, but I believe indicative of a general, and disturbing, trend.
End of rant.
I’ll continue to do my blog and….see when happens next.
Exit….muttering……
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