Bonus: This bit of aggressive excitement happened outside my window just twenty minutes ago … quickly slipped onto the page before posting:
We are on two distant seashores this week. Firstly, here is an exceedingly smart bird we saw about this date a couple of years ago on an accessible-only-by-sea beach at the very southernmost tip of Haida Gwaii, on the Pacific coast. That’s some 5000km (3000 and a few miles) west of where I am composing this.
It’s a Long-billed Dowitcher (Limnodromus scolopaceus) which really stood out from the background gulls and shorebirds that were on the extremely isolated beach. Its colouration is striking, hence this picture. I’m rather proud of it - almost all the birds were totally unconcerned about people stomping around on their beach, didn’t seem to see us a threat. Long and Short-billed Dowitchers are quite similar in body conformation with Short-bills being more present on salt water margins than Long-bills who tend to opt for salt marshes given the opportunity … and this beach had a bit of both. The IUCN currently lists the Long-billed Dowitcher as Near Threatened, with continuing population decline across its range., much due to wetland loss in migration stopover sites and degradation of estuarine wintering areas. They are fun to watch when feeding using a rapid, rhythmic probing of the bill into shallow water or soft mud to find buried invertebrates by touch rather than sight - it has been described as like a sewing machine. They nest on the ground in Arctic tundra wetlands. Nesting that far north means that their reproductive cycle is compressed by the short Arctic summer, and given the date on which we saw it, this individual was undoubtedly taking a break on a long southbound migration journey.
And now, we move to a Scottish beach over 5000km to the east, and almost a lifetime away. There is a point to this, and a message at the end. Keep going.
Quadrats, transects and the price of education
A couple of weeks ago I returned from my month-long newsletter sabbatical, electronically walking along virtual and actual trails while pondering on the next stage of this newsletter. As I said in the post that I then shared, I had learned, or at least been advised, that “making posts more personal” is something that attracts readers and makes them stick around. I suppose that’s not rocket science, but it’s also not something that my mind does naturally, or with ease.
This newsletter is enjoying an encouragingly growing circulation. Nothing earth shattering, but a slow accretion. It began, and remains, as a way to introduce readers to the too often overlooked wildlife in our towns and villages and gardens, along with some useful information about wildlife gardening based on our own, small scale efforts in suburbia. As Mr. Gradgrind famously said, “What we need is facts, boy. Facts.” But just facts alone can be a bit dry and dusty, so I will endeavour to occasionally add a little colour as I wander down rabbit holes. “Make it into a story”, the web-experts tell me. “It’s not a text book”. We shall see.
Anyway, I was reminded of a post that I wrote two and half years ago, when my readership was much, much smaller than it is today. I have reworked it, added some new material arising from a conversation with my wife about an event from our distant student days and … well, I hope you find it interesting and, indeed, more personal than some of my writings. I am using this opportunity to raise a topic that I think is important - the huge loans that so many students have to take out in order to complete their education. That doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with playing on the shore, but read on and bear with me. All will soon become clear.
Transecting the Shoreline
Shortly after the new year in 2024, I read the short article that you can read in the following link. Reading it again, a memory of a personally formative experience from a time and a place almost literally a lifetime away from today, bubbled to the surface of my brain.
Somewhere on the other side of 55 years ago in the summer of 1968, a group of biology students were taken by coach and ferry to spend a fine and sunny summer week at a field studies centre in Millport, on the tiny Scottish island of Great Cumbrae. There we were to get hands on experience of the rudiments of field biology data collection and analysis.
We were introduced to all sorts of fascinating biological field study techniques, one of which included randomly chucking “quadrats” over our shoulders and then making lists of all the living things they encompassed wherever they chanced to fall. The chucking it over you shoulder business is to do with statistically random sampling rather than the biased sampling which happens when you know something especially rare and exciting is lurking and so deliberately plonk your quadrat down on top of it so it can be included in your records. We played with scuttling crabs, slipped on rocks covered in seaweed, collected many things from rock pools and had a splendidly studentish time on a fairly relaxed leash. I don’t recall visiting pubs though - an omission that today’s students would probably not believe, but back then we lived relatively restrained lives and didn’t have the spare cash anyway … and anyway, this was Calvinist Scotland.
The relevance to the article linked to above is that we, too, did shoreline/beach transects.
The professional transects were done at night because to do this stuff seriously means you want to do it on a falling tide in order to get the greatest amount of exposed land. If that happens to be at night, then that’s when you go out and work. That’s sensible science and it keeps your feet dry too. We, though, were neophytes, simply learning a new technique rather than doing a serious continuing multi-year study with a strict protocol. Looked back from these distant years it was clear that our mentors simply wanted to get the concept over to us in daylight. Because of that, we transected the beach and rocky foreshore on a rising tide rather than the required falling one. The length of our transect got shorter and shorter as we scrambled to take notes of what was living along it before the sea lapped at our feet. I know we took specimens back to the lab to be identified, and for sure several of us had pretty wet feet when we were done.
I had no camera back then to record my fellow students skillfully transecting the beach … so I asked HAL to give you an idea, accompanied by a hint of authentic period student fashion too. 🙂
I made a point of checking up on the field centre we were at. It is still there, and has since been enlarged and modernized with its own student accommodation too - visitors no longer have to use local B&Bs.
https://www.field-studies-council.org/locations/millport/?section=research
One day, we had a break from learning and took another ferry across to the much larger island of Arran where we hiked to the top of Goat Fell (Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba). Years later, J and I spent a proper vacation on Arran - really, a very nice place indeed, and Goat Fell is well worth the effort of getting to the top of. How’s this for a summit view?
Funny what sticks with you in memory. Gosh, biology can be such fun.
And now … I am finally getting to the point.
It was a very different world 58 years ago, in so many ways. In today’s world British and Canadian students would be racking up debts paying huge sums for their education. Including a trip like this would add considerably to the price. A big difference with today being that, regardless of your family’s resources, the government in the late 1960s picked up most of the bills and the education component was FREE. As they should. In the Britain of 1968, student accommodation fees were means tested. People from wealthy families had to pay for their food and lodging, on a sliding scale, while my parents paid nothing - we were not at all wealthy. In other words, all of my tertiary education was free. Yes, I was a lucky boomer.
As a consequence, none of us graduated with a millstone debt around our necks. What I have to wonder is that in the educational world of today, would I have made it to tertiary education and a professional scientific career, knowing the debt I would thereby have graduated with? I ask that because the financial strain it would have put on my parents would have been horrendous. Probably impossible, and so my choice today would be huge student debts or just go into one of the trades … not that having a trade is a bad thing, far from it, but the freedom of choice would be taken away. At the very least it would be very hard to make a decision, simply because we were not a rich family, however much parents like mine believed in education, when the bills come in things must be very hard. I imagine today that I would grit my teeth and accept the crippling personal debts, but that’s surely not right. Much is wrong with the world when access to educational opportunities is filtered through parental income.
That week in Millport was a memorable point of my life. All these years later I remember the fun and interest and, yes the opportunity, it gave to me and my friends. I should also mention that never again was I required to chuck a quadrat over my shoulder, the whole exercise was theoretical - my future held indoor laboratories and microscopes instead.
Everyone should be able to do these things without worrying over future debts.
For EU/EEA citizens, public university education is essentially free in most of Western and Northern Europe. For non-EU students, Germany remains one of the few countries offering truly free tuition at public universities across all student nationalities. In France it is capped at €250-600/year
So why do British and Canadian students have to pay so much when other, equally wealthy, countries don’t charge at all? Why are students and their families not making this an election issue?
Morning Gold
Mid-week, Buster-the-cat-that-was, shared this early morning sight in his parallel substack:
Something to leave you with:
Chipping Sparrow - feeling a bit rumpled
The bald eagle was originally Canadian. Our American friends loved it so much they chose it as their symbol, and it became known as American.
I will always be grateful that I went to University during the times when we got student grants, rather than loans. I enjoyed several field trips too, though never got to Millport, i don't think Edinburgh University ever took students there in our day.