Monday 15 December 2008

"Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now ? "

I hate to follow the trend of quitting blogging and following messrs. Allwood and McKinney (and possibly Menzie ?) in finally putting fingertip to keypad but I really am wondering who is reading this high quality crossbill copy that I write and wondering if it is worth continuing. Averaging around 4-5 hits per day it hardly seems anyone gives a monkey about crossbills in stark contrast to the two aforementioned blogs that were far more popular and who still decided to quit. Go work that out !

So, I am going to take a short sabbatical to review things ( actually, to write up some more stuff and to finally finish y CD of Crossbill recordings which should be available next year). My gosh, I have turned into a 'desk ornithologist' - shoot me. No, don't worry the fieldwork will continue, especially ringing crossbills ( on my own !!). I will also be starting a new blog linked through my professional website which will be updated in the New Year.

Keep tuned in all 5 of you as there may be sporadic updates.

All the best, your friendly neighbourhood Loxiafan.

6 comments:

James said...

Stay - just post more. Your delerious mumblings are in(s)anely brilliant.

Stephen Menzie said...

Don't worry! I'm just a bit busy... uni work and birthday/end of year "celebrations"!
Keep it going.. even if it's just something for me to read when I'm meant to be working on my project!

Lindsay Cargill (aka Loxiafan) said...

Eh, thanks James......I think ?

Stephen, good to hear from you. Coming up sometime ? We could maybe go ringing ?

Jochen said...

Just wanted to drop a short comment that I am also reading this.
Don't quit. Tom quitting was hard enough, we don't need any more of that nonsense.

Stephen Menzie said...

My lectures finish on Marsh 27th so, providing I'm up to date with my dissertation/project by then, I'll be looking at doing something. And since I keep promising I'll come up at some point! Ringing would be good; give me an extra species or 15 for my ringing list ;)

Lindsay Cargill (aka Loxiafan) said...

Thanks Jochen and Stephen. As you can see the blog will continue, if for no other reason it seems the only way for me to be able to say what I like without some twat changing or deleting my posts.

Jochen, are you 'back' in Germany ? It would be great to have a crossbill contact there ?

Stephen, March is a good time for xbills but is the height of the breeding season so no big flocks (of pine crossbills) I won't be catching any crossbills at this time - it can apparently stress them out when they should be feeding chicks and males feeding females on the nest and as you will now know the first rule of ringing is that BTO mantra "the bird's welfare comes first". Quite right too.

However, lots of exciting stuff like nest monitoring and nest finding to do. Some sound recording of pairs at nests too. However, you would have to sign the Grampian Ringing Group Unofficial Secrets Act which is something paltry along the lines of promising us your first bought Swarovski scope. Does that sound okay ? ;-)