Among the world bird watching community, there is a term called “Life bird”. I do not know if the bird photographers’ community uses the term - but I accept the term in my own photography. The term means that a bird watcher is seeing a particular bird for the first time in his/her life – a lifer as the bird is known. Thus for me too I got two “lifers” during the past two weeks of good fortune of being incapacitated by the ongoing lockdown. This should be a record of some sort – I mean you don’t see two lifers in two weeks – people travel thousands of miles to see a lifer and yet they don’t.
The following are my lifers:
Himalayan Bluetail
Dark-breasted Rosefinch
As I said in my earlier post – I also managed to photograph a total of 25 birds in the last two weeks that are, what I call, “Keepers”. This is another record – no photographer manages to shoot so many birds in such a short time. We have to spend months to get that many birds – I mean photos of a quality that are “Keepers”. This term applies to photos that are good enough to be saved - and not deleted.
As I have said many a time in the past – not all situations are a curse for everyone – for some it is a boon.
Wow! What wonderful birds. Congratulations on your accomplishment during lockdown! However, seeing all these bird photographs made me think of birds of another kind - poultry chicken! Even after thousands of chicken died due to poisoning from Karma Feed, I am surprised that in Tsirang, they are okayed to send the chicks for slaughter as meat! If some strange toxin had killed thousands of birds, how is it ok for us to eat those affected chicken which are apparently not laying eggs now? I know they easily assigned the culprit as aflatoxins - but shouldn't that have more of a chronic effect, and not something this acute? Can you rule out arsenic or heavy metals? We don't know. This is where there is no Ngar - BAFRA, Livestock Department? Things are taken so lightly, and anything goes. Now, we have reports of livestock dying. Where are the lab results? What was the cause? Maybe it was not a big thing, but the public is not informed. Also, our media is terribly lazy - there is no follow up, or even an interest to get to the root cause of something so terrible for our farmers. This is terrible misconduct on the feed company and the government's ends. Not acceptable in any other part of the world. But in Bhutan, we are a compassionate society - nothing is important! And people talk about serving Tsa wa sum. This is a very important issue that requires immediate accountability - we cannot toy with the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of Ngar, I read with amusement the recent assessment from RCSC that 50% of the executives assessed so far have failed (thank god for the external assessors). If left to the erstwhile RCSC system, they were judged the best! So, in essence, RCSC has failed the country. The system that approves the selection of these non-performers is fraught with errors. These people should not be there in the first place - who selected them? Who approved them? And why? And how come they were found to be so incompetent? Over time, how has RCSC become so ineffective in measuring civil service competency? Now, you go after the system that willy-nilly selects these types of individuals over the ones that actually have the competencies and work hard. This has been the underlying cause of the low morale in the civil service. All the chamchas and kha-tashi's, who are always pleasing the ones above them, are somehow seen as capable. They can talk their way up the ladder. We have more of these people who may be out of the regular civil service, but their only competency is that they can talk well, and please the bosses. These dead-weights are a burden to the exchequer. Please let them retire and spend the rest of their lives in prayer. That might be a better service to the future of the country, and easier on the country's limited resources. If at all they have expertise, they can offer advice. The country is waiting for next steps.
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