Following on my other messages and those of everyone else. I hope someone compiles these reports and writes it up for publication. Sadly I could not be there as I can’t afford the travel (even for a once or twice in a lifetime, life highlight event). I would be happy to help with this or co-author with someone. If no one who was there wishes to do this, I am willing to do this. If people send me what they observed. This also goes for the one going over south Australia a few years ago. Or even for any other similar event, such as if you have information from the 1976 TSE that somehow didn’t get to me at the time… The point is that collection of information about how birds respond when a TSE occurs at different times of the day tells us a lot more than the results from just one event. It is clear that the impact on birds in this time was far less dramatic than the one in 1976. That is likely due to that it was early in the morning. Also the one going over south Australia a few years ago was less dramatic than the one in 1976. That is likely due to that it there are not a lot of birds there and being open country, most of the birds would be close to the ground and roosting behaviour would be hard to observe. But if all this is never written up, the relevance this knowledge will just disappear. Then all the dills will think that a TSE is only interesting to sun study or just a entertaining freak show. That is the way the media portray it. I watched it on ABC TV from home but what totally abysmal coverage that was, with people in a studio talking over the whole thing. Why couldn’t they just set up a camera and sound gear and broadcast in silence for just five minutes……..
I also have collected many published reports or just emails or letters of information from all over the world over the past 30+ years of bird reactions to other TSE events. The great majority of these are just one person’s observations and thus of limited value. There is as yet nothing remotely close to my 1982 study. The many books about TSE are mostly about the astronomy or history, many mention animal behaviour but usually at the most superficial descriptive level, usually with no sensible analysis. It is only by compiling this stuff that anything useful can be documented.
Philip Veerman 24 Castley Circuit Kambah ACT 2902
02 – 62314041
