After over 30 years of walking
Titchwell's trails and West Bank path I don't often get to see something new
for this special corner of the Norfolk coast. Today I'd got to the reserve
relatively early and as the temperature started to rise and the light became
ever hazier I started to wander back towards where my car was parked near the Visitor
Centre, pausing briefly to take a picture of The Warden of the Marshes a Redshank, perched high on some saltmarsh
vegetation alert for predators.
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| Otter West Bank Path, RSPB Titchwell Marsh |
I could see a birder wandering along the path towards me and my brain immediately recognised the familiar shape and walk of my old friend Digi-Scoping Dave. Like so many people in the birding community the last time our paths had crossed was on this 2 metre wide strip of path that heads directly north towards the sea. We greeted each other and had a rambling chat, catching up on each other's health and wellbeing and that of our mutual acquaintances, the weather and what was about. But being birders our brains were not 100% focused on each other and the conversation and we were both distracted by a commotion over the Fresh Marsh when all of the Black Headed Gulls nesting on Island Hide's green roof took flight and wheeled around our heads in a noisy flock.
Thinking out loud I uttered the
entirely predictable line "What's caused that?" as Dave and I, with
close to a century of birding experience between us went into automatic scan
the sky for a predator mode. Who knows we might even get lucky with something a
little unusual, perhaps a migrating Osprey or a hunting Hobby scything through
the blue summer sky.
Bizarrely after a few seconds we couldn't
see the expected large gull or bird of prey. Dave was the first to lower his
gaze and soon had my attention when he immediately announced "There's an
Otter!". Again I initially deployed my decades of experience of looking at
wildlife, and glanced at the lagoon on the grounds that was where you would expect
to see an Otter, only to realise that this Otter was in fact wandering down the
main West Bank Path towards us completely unfazed by our presence. Eventually
it deigned to take notice of our presence and slipped down the vegetated bank
towards the lagoon only to reappear a few seconds later its head poking out
from the grass verge. Then after a minute of checking us out it ambled across
the path, over the seawall and disappeared into deep cover on Thornham Marshes
saltings.
I could have missed this Otter if
I'd relied on my instinctive search patterns triggered by the behaviour of the
resident nesting gulls. Not because I wouldn't have eventually looked at the
path where the Otter was walking towards me, but because by the time I stopped
searching the sky for the cause of the commotion the Otter might have slipped
away.
Now I've seen a few Otters over
the years, perhaps most memorably on the river in Thetford where a couple of
well grown cubs chased a large brown chicken and caused it to panic and decide
that the way to escape their attention was to plunge head first into the river,
this was a bad thing from the chickens perspective as the Otters followed it
into the water and they and the chicken soon disappeared below the surface.
When I think back about the conversations I had in the 1990's when for a year I
lived and worked at Strumpshaw Fen on the banks of the river Yare and never saw
an Otter, and the wardens discussed the disappearance of Otters some years
before from the river due to a pollution incident, it really is heartening to
see their return. Indeed I half expect to see an Otter these days when visiting
the Broads. I just hope Titchwell's latest residents continue to focus on eating
the plentiful supply of fish at Titchwell and leave the nesting Avocets alone.
There is a lot of chatter at
the moment about AI and its uses, misuses and risks and opportunities. How it
feeds off data and learns from patterns and comes up with responses as a
result. But how would it cope when the data doesn't make it onto a database,
when the information it has tells it to advise looking up at the sky, this
would lead to a self reinforcing pattern with no data gathered from other
directions and a sloppy distorted view of what to do would emerge, or as I'm
not an expert on AI maybe not. But I do have some expertise in watching birds
and wildlife and know that as well as recognising patterns, being able to read
a landscape and animal behaviour, I've also learnt to anticipate what might
happen next based on my brain constantly weighing up the information it is receiving
from my senses enabling me to adjust my behaviour as a result.
So if for example I am watching
the Avocets on the Fresh Marsh at Titchwell I know when something exciting is
about to happen by their behaviour and what they might be about to do, meaning
I can get my camera settings ready to try and capture the moment.
Black Headed Gull and Avocets, RSPB Titchwell Marsh
Dave and I watched the Otter
disappear over the seawall and the Gulls settle back on their nests another
enemy seen off and a few minutes calm before the next panic. I headed back to
the Visitor Centre where Trevor was showing someone a Spotted Flycatcher, too
rare a sight these days but a common in the London Park I birded in my youth.
So I had experience of what the bird might be doing where and what to look for.
I immediately scanned the tall trees
overlooking the VC and there it was, where I expected it to be sallying forth
from a dead wood snag at the top of the trees to catch flies, my sophisticated in
built AI, aka brain, had long ago learnt its most likely behavioural pattern
and helped me get onto this special little bird quickly.
