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Hot and can't be bothered28th May 2026Hot and can't be bothered
Equifinality is a place. How you get there is the hard bit. I spent a thesis chapter looking at this some 40+ years ago. Unless you know how you got there, it is hard to argue a case between differing schools of thought. Have that knowledge and you may dismiss one or all.
Let me explain. A pattern is a matter of dots over space. Think of red kites: they were always (apparently) birds that favoured wild welsh woodlands; woods a long way from anywhere. And even then, they teetered on the edge. If you believed the obligate choice theory, then any wider reintroduction was going to fail. Only, it didn't. Kites were in wales as a last choice refuge, not a preferred choice. Give them nice patchy landscapes and no poisons or shotguns, and they will do fine. They did and are.
Water voles were once widespread, and had large fossorial populations: freeliving in grasslands. So much so, that there were bounties on them. Add time, and the numbers of fossorial colonies have shrunk. Now, we have water voles- yet the vole gets soaked if in for too long. Not an overwhelming adaptation. Look back through time and you'll see that water was an option, not an obligate choice.
The same sort of recency argument applies to other groups that have had their environments altered. After all, who ever heard of urban peregrines? Go back 60 years, and seeing peregrines was a feat. Go back 90, and pre-organochlorines the birds were suffering persecution. Look at earlier records, and there they are.
So, be careful how you attribute cause and effect.
Now, where did the can't be bothered come into all of this? Many birds seem toi have downed tools due to the heat. Displays are desultory, and songs are shorter, and less often. They are clearly not there. Or are they? Next week, when the heat goes, I'll expect to be hearing a little more: it will be the heat wot did it- seeing the history helps know what the pattern means. |
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