AA Birdpix, Birds, Travel and More

  Artificial Intelligence vs Human Intelligence We all have views on AI, usually polarised, and I have to admit when confronted with a chatbot mine becomes very polarised, especially when I have to "ask" three times to contact a human being. Of course the problem here is that the software involved is usually as cheap as possible and the bot only "understands" what is programmed in to it.  However, as ever the overall situation is not black and white, and there is some extremely sophisticated and useful AI which we use happily without even thinking about it. From a birder's point of view  using  photo processing software gives a whole new dimension, not only to what I've just taken, but more importantly, to those poor shots which I took on slide film, such as Slender-billed Curlew, and a completely black (silhouetted) Parrot which I took years ago. In the eyes of a photographer it may be cheating, but I've always been a birder with a camera, so I don'...

  Mongolia-still truly wild.  To many people countries outside the US or Europe are of no interest, but to a birder the rest of the world holds rare and beautiful species. However, one of the least densely populated countries in the world is almost unknown to most people, indeed the name of its capital used to frequently be a question on quizzes. As time goes on I find that many species and places I always wanted to see have become "tourist attractions". A prime example is the Jaguar, when Wildwings began operating tours, not that long ago, they still appeared on TV documentaries as being impossible to see, in fact I remember a celebrity being sent to a favoured area and not seeing one after a week, that  being the story of the trip. Whether it was true or not, most Wildwings tours in those days saw Jaguar (along with much "harder" species such as Maned Wolf and Brazilian Merganser). We saw that magnificent cat in 2009, our group in two small boats, but now it has b...

  Three Pratincoles on my list I've done little since returning from Mongolia except processing photos, but have been birding a few times. Frampton is my nearest reserve, and my favourite, despite the possibility of being blinded by reflections from a pointless "sculpture" in the early mornings. I keep a Frampton wader list for fun, which currently stands at about 43, so I had to go for the Pratincole recently. As many will know, there are three on the British list, Common, formerly known as Collared, being the commonest; Black-winged, and Oriental, of which there have only been nine records involving five birds. In my twitching days I saw all three in roughly that order and numbers, my first Common in 1986 (total 9). Black-winged in 1988 (total 6) and Oriental later in 1988 (total 3). Ive seen all three species abroad on several occasions, but as they are among my favourite waders I'm always happy to see more. I would like to see Grey, my last Pratincole, but current...