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'LINCOLNSHIRE NATURE' 08 April 2009
In response to repeated and overwhelming requests to the Editorial Office (we had expected to be somewhat underwhelmed by it all - unless the first day of April 2009 has been extended or 1st April 2010 has arrived early?) and despite the lapse of a week, we now move forward and publish Professor Harrison's article on the UK Cattle Egret Cull, written as a sub-contribution to the original 1st April 2009 thread. We apologise for the delay - we know it is 8th April but we are a weekly magazine.
Once again, for those of you with a headache or who got out of bed on the wrong side this morning and are feeling mega-tetchy, we recommend that you log off NOW to save yourselves further distress. You have been warned, so don't complain later.
Professor Harrison OBE, Director of the recently established Boothby Graffoe - Mavis Enderby Avifaunal Institute, Lincoln, has now returned from abroad and has written a brief article on the UK Cattle Egret Cull.
Professor W.C. Harrison, who is affectionately known as Prof. "Flush" Harry by his students, is the President of the Pan-European Division of the International Silver Listers Association. He is typical of those gifted British academic Naturalists we all admire so much. He plans to retire to Cornwall on reaching the age of sixty-five in July, where he has accepted a part-time job writing general press releases for the local County Council.
It so happens that the Professor has "an endearing predilection to engage in the manifestation of prolix exposition through a scientific bio-speak disposition form of communication notwithstanding the occasional availability of more comprehensible Lincolnshire-speak alternatives". However, the Professor, who enjoys an occasional Vodka-Martini (shaken but not stirred), has a very good sense of humour and even though he often uses bio-speak with tongue in cheek, he still laughs when people take him to task over it. He merely adds with a broad smile, "Why use only one word when three will do. We are all different. Take for example my unusual (some actually say 'weird') old friend, Corporal (Retired) Jon Freddison of Braceheath Bridge - he's even more verbose and more different than I am, especially after a few Vodka-Martinis (stirred but not shaken - that's the cocktail, not the Corporal). He talks so much, the last time he went to Ireland, the Blarney Stone asked if it could kiss him. You have to forgive him, though. When he lived in Torquay, his best friend was a certain Basil Fawlty and Jon has never been the same since".
Be that as it may, let's now move on to the article.
The Professor is convinced that "every reader of the following will be fired by a new wave of fervent enthusiasm and optimism after digesting its simple yet dynamic message of hope for future symbiotic harmony regarding the Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis), Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) and the hybrid Egret (Lirpa megaloofus semipalindromus)".
"As a typical and historically homogamous heterothermic volant macro-organism
Bubulcus ibis
is distinctly capable of long range active dispersal strategies and a fully comprehensive understanding of appropriate source-sink dynamics inclusive of parameter variables together with the species' sequential dispersal pattern mechanisms and suboptimal determinants must not obfuscate our instinctively incumbent attitudes towards its UK sub-population activities and the resultant
Lirpa megaloofus semipalindromus hybrids
or its speciation orientation potential which is clearly indicative even conducive to the systematic yet unhelpful extrapolation of quotient analytical data pertaining to some palaeogenic cycle of avifaunal evolution beyond our powers of speculation whereas its current intransigently maladjusted navigational vagrancy to the UK could facilitate an admittedly degraded and potentially speciously infallible evaluation of its recently adopted cross-speciation tendancy vis-a-vis
Egretta garzetta
which allied to an analysis of its previous quasi-obsessive natal philopatry in the face of inevitable anthropogenic climate change will possibly direct us towards a satisfactorily funded and correlationally well-researched ecological plasticity and symbiotic species occupancy prediction within its current non-contiguous and non-homogenous geographical range - especially where the indigenous Egret spp are effectively depauperate in relative terms - not unwisely overlooking or omitting to consider of course the inherent but regressively hostile and contumaciously intervening demographic matrix repercussions specifically impinging on Egretta garzetta of which we are all fully aware".
NB. Copies of this somewhat simplistic analysis regarding the evolving interaction in the UK of
Bubulcus ibis with Egretta garzetta
are also available from my Institute Office in Finnish, Urdu and Latin for those interested.
Editorial Note:
1. Phew! c 215 words: just one sentence and not a single comma regarded as essential. When you are fired up and going full-steam ahead, punctuation obviously becomes superfluous.
2. No comments please on the scientific logic or otherwise of the above written article. The night before writing it, the Professor had attended, as President, the International Silver Listers (Pan-European Division) Annual Dinner at the "Fattenbustarden Hotel" in Berlin (we think that's how you spell it). As a result, in his article he may have:
- taken his eye off the ball
- had his head in the clouds
- had tongue in cheek
- put foot in mouth
- had Vodka-Martini or Liebfraumilch in bloodstream
... or all of the above.
3. That's the last you'll hear of Professor Harrison or Corporal Freddison... We are sure we heard "Thank God!" Oh well, never mind, at least we tried.
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