{"id":7946,"date":"2021-07-26T17:01:25","date_gmt":"2021-07-26T17:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7946"},"modified":"2021-07-26T17:01:25","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T17:01:25","slug":"countryfiles-misleading-ecology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2021\/07\/26\/countryfiles-misleading-ecology\/","title":{"rendered":"Countryfile's misleading ecology"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sometimes despair at Countryfile. \u00a0There was an outwardly commendable segment on Sunday\u2019s programme<\/a> about pollinators. \u00a0It was a coming together of Countryfile's Plant Britain<\/a> scheme and Radio 2's Big Bee Challenge<\/a>. \u00a0A bloke from Radio 2 interviewed the London Natural History Museum's Head of Biodiversity in the museum's garden. \u00a0Both waved their hands a lot in what seems to be de\u00a0rigour <\/i>at theBBC these days. \u00a0Whilst the museum grounds are not exactly 'country', they both stressed the point that biodiverse (aka green) space in urban areas is vitally important for us all. \u00a0Dead right.<\/p>\n

They were using the FIT Count app from UK POMS<\/a> to identify pollinators. \u00a0The programme focused on common (black) knapweed<\/a> which was prominent in the 1 acre garden. \u00a0In the 10 minutes specified by the app only two hoverflies turned up \u2013 understandably, just which of the 270 UK species<\/a> went unspecified. \u00a0Disappointing, but it made the point, and there were other pollinators in the garden at the time as we saw.<\/p>\n

All this was fine, but during the endless chatter between the two blokes (and mostly all we saw were head 'n' shoulders shots of them), images of bluebells and horse chestnut appeared on the screen. \u00a0Clearly, dull old knapweed was being sexed up with more charismatic images to keep viewers' attention, thereby sending entirely the wrong impression of what's in bloom in July. \u00a0Do idiots make these programmes, or just cynics?<\/p>\n

The garden was also full of meadow cranesbill<\/a> but it went unremarked. \u00a0Now, that's a sexy plant ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sometimes despair at Countryfile. \u00a0There was an outwardly commendable segment on Sunday\u2019s programme about pollinators. \u00a0It was a coming together of Countryfile's Plant Britain scheme and Radio 2's Big Bee Challenge. \u00a0A bloke from Radio 2 interviewed the London...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}