While serving with the British Army in Canada I had the pleasure of doing several tours of BATUS near Medicine Hat in Alberta. Double pleasure as I have family in Calgary. Prior to going on to the prairie we are given a briefing by the Canadian authority’s, part of which is about conservation.
During
this particular briefing we were shown slides of Burrowing Owl (Athene
cunicularia) and informed that if we saw any of these birds we had to report it
straight away to the authorities’ who said that they would stop the exercise
and move us to another part of the prairie in order to protect this bird.
One night I was returning to my battery
when I spotted six Burrowing Owls near to our gun position, I made a note of
the grid and on arrival went to the command post and informed the officer in
charge of my observation and asked him to report this location to the
authorities.
His words to me were "you are
joking aren’t you" to which I replied "do I look like I am joking
sir" please send the message, which he did once he understood he was
required by the authorities to do so.
Needless to say the Canadians were true
to their word, the exercise was stopped and it took nearly three days to
relocate the Battle Group to another part of the range.
The outcome of all this was: 1). The
lads thought for once birdwatchers are not so bad after all. 2). I am sure the
officers were not best pleased, perhaps due to the loss of training time or
with me. 3). I got some extra unexpected birding in, this is what I call
"In the Bag".
P.S. My Battery Sergeant Major
expressed during his dine out speech that in all his years in the army he had
never experienced such a thing, as he pointed in my direction and politely
called me a twitchier.
No comments:
Post a Comment