Bird Brain: Over 2,400 Questions to Test Your Bird Knowledge
An ornithological quiz book packed with challenging questions for birders, based on the popular ‘Bird Brain of Britain’ contest at the annual BirdFair.The British Birdwatching Fair, held every August at Rutland Water Nature Reserve, attracts over 30,000 visitors every year. One of the most popular attractions in the events marquee is the ‘Bird Brain of Britain’ contest. Each of the four contestants must answer a set of questions on their nominated specialist subject, and a second set on general (ornithological) knowledge. The participants have included popular presenters and experts throughout the years, including Stephen Moss, Chris Harbard, Mark Andrews, Nigel Redman, Mike Dilger and David Lindo, among many others.The book will feature the questions asked in the contest over its 30-year lifespan. Many seemingly simple questions turn out to have complex answers, and some that seem difficult have a very simple explanation. The questions are difficult and varied enough to test any birder’s knowledge, and will provide many hours of challenging entertainment. Be they trivial, idiosyncratic, baffling or strange, the varied bird trivia included makes this compilation as entertaining and enlightening as it is educational.
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William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in the United Kingdom by William Collins in 2018
This eBook edition published by William Collins in 2018
Copyright © Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife 2018
Front Cover Photograph © Shutterstock
The authors assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008315740
eBook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008315757
Version: 2018-08-09
Contents
Preface
History of Birdfair
30 Years of Global Impact
General Knowledge Questions
Specialist Questions
General Knowledge Answers
About the Book
About the Publisher
The Bird Brain of Britain competition at the Birdfair began in 1992 with the title Mastermind and it roughly followed the BBC’s successful programme of the same name. Distinguished ornithologists (Chris Mead, Janet Kear, Nigel Collar and Chris Harbard) volunteered to compete and Bill Oddie was the natural question master. It was a success and has continued ever since. The snappier title Bird Brain of Britain was thought of for 1995 and so it has remained. Leading ornithologists continued to ‘volunteer’ and Bill Oddie continued to grill them, for all but two of the next eighteen years, when Chris Packham was Inquisitor. In the last few years others filling the Torquemada role have been, besides Bill and Chris, Nick Baker, Mike Dilger and Stephen Moss.
The contestants set the Specialist questions (in theory). They are asked to provide ten questions each for the other three contestants so that there are thirty questions to ask. In practice, some questions are the same, some are unaskable and some are not absolutely correct. I have set the General Knowledge questions for the last eighteen years. I am uncertain who really set the questions in the early years before I was involved, but I was under the impression that Tim Dixon set them. However, as he won the 1993 contest, either somebody else did or …
The original competition was intended to be educational fun, but birders’ inherent competitiveness got in the way and it is now a cut-throat battle, the more so since a pecuniary prize of £2,000 was provided by the Catalan Tourist Board in 2007 and subsequently by Vanguard and Swarovski Optik. This is divided into £1,000 for the winner’s organization, £500 for second and £250 each for third and fourth. For the first ten years the contestants represented conservation organizations, namely the RSPB, BTO, BOU, BirdLife International, WWT and the Wildlife Trusts. Then other organizations were invited to put forward a hapless volunteer. The four regional bird clubs, ornithological journals, travel companies and optics companies provided cannon-fodder until 2007. Since 2007 contestants have represented the four regional bird clubs – African Bird Club (ABC), Neotropical Bird Club (NBC), Oriental Bird Club (OBC) and Ornithological Society of the Middle East (OSME), with BTO replacing NBC since 2012.
In 2004 we produced a book of the first twelve years and it was suggested another book covering the next fourteen years was fitting for the thirtieth Birdfair. Ornithology has changed quite a lot in the intervening years, with much greater knowledge about birds being acquired, much of it through the use of modern technology. This technology has resulted in frequent revisions of taxonomic classification, much of it confusing to more senior birders, and probably younger ones too. The Handbook of Birds of the World and BirdLife International Checklist seems to me the most rational taxonomy to follow, and is certainly the most user friendly, and so this has been adopted in this book. As a consequence there are quite a number of revised answers, as the original answers, though right at the time, may now be wrong, or at least different. This has been indicated to avoid confusion (with luck). Grey italic is used in the answers section (and a few in the questions too), to indicate the additions and changes.
The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List categories of threatened birds are frequently mentioned and I have used the recognised abbreviations for the different categories, namely EX, for Extinct; EW, for Extinct in the Wild; CR, for Critically Endangered; CR (PE), for Critically Endangered Possibly Extinct; CR (PEW), for Critically Endangered Possibly Extinct in the Wild; EN, for Endangered; VU, for Vulnerable; NT, for Near Threatened; LC, for Least Concern; and DD for Data Deficient. The term Globally Threatened refers to the CR, EN and VU categories.
