Twenty years ago

"My first recollection ofthe bird ringing setup in S.A. is of the operation being conducted form a conrer ofthe Fitzoatrick library by a rather elderly lernale secrerary on a shoe-string budget. She seerned confused by coordinates and indeed some of her coordinates u'ere confusing, rvhich rerninds me of the Yellowbilled Duck recovered in Finlarrd. The SAOS Rinsins Scherne was frrrlher fiaught br its parrir'i conversion to a holerith systeln, a sor-t of poor man's computer card. The cards liave coded holes and the systetn r.vas full of thern too. In fact a lot ofearh data rvere lost as a result ofthis conversion. tvlrich has never since been used. "lt may be of some consolation to ringers to know that NUBRA's 'comouter consultant' is a ringer. Although I doubt if he remembers it, I was introduced to the gentle art of bird ringing by Mr Peter Mendelsohn. This was the Pretoria sewage works. A few years later, on a Statistics Association Conference, I visited those sarne reeds from the other side where a water purification plant had displaced the reeds, and, I presurne, the stvallows.