Perhaps it’s just the ornithologists, but they seem very loath to write things down and back up their memories with their notes. They like pulling observations out of thin air and their populations counts are really unreproducible as well. I mentioned earlier that there are thousands of Vaux Swifts funnelling into the school chimney in front of my parents’ house, and those swifts seem to be randomly counted by the birders and ornithologists.

I helped a friend of mine, a graduate student in ornithology, count the birds in 2002 and the numbers were a lot more believable because he called out every 100 birds and I made tally marks on a piece of paper. He couldn’t fudge the count and we had a repeatable process. The birders said 15,000 birds; he estimated 10,000; we counted 2,000. Anyway, I guess just trusting them won’t hurt me in the long run.

Today was the first game of the NFL season and I saw most of the game. It was exciting and I almost got to see New England lose so it was well worth the price of admission. I really don’t like Tom Brady. I don’t know why. I just don’t. At least that makes for more interesting viewing. There’s hardly any point to watching a game when you don’t care about the teams.