This checkin to GC9EXXC Shady Seat on The Green reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Spring’s coming, and with it a stack of cachers either new or else returning from hibernation. Therefore; I’m briefly checking-in on my geocaches to ensure they’re in good condition. Today I peeped at this one, and found it happy and well and ready to be hunted. Go find it!
Hurrah! I just made my first successful submission to Curious Cones, a weblog collecting photographs of traffic cones spotted in unusual places.
I spotted this cone while the younger child and I took a walk to the next-nearest village to our temporary accommodation, in order to find a geocache, tag some benches for OpenBenches, and have a cafe brunch.
Anyway: if you’re not following Curious Cones, it’s exactly as delightful as you might expect.
This checkin to GCBAJC3 Cache me if you can, Jeremy reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Despite being relatively ‘local’ – only half a mile away, and fans of the show – it took until this morning before the family and I actually came to up visit Clarkson’s Farm. We’re even-more-local but now, after a flood made our house uninhabitable and we moved, temporarily, to a holiday let just up the road.
This morning we visited Diddly Squat for a round of sausage sandwiches, after which the youngest child and I decided to make a run for this nearby geocache. The kid put his finger right on the cache before I’d even had a chance to take a look for it!
Log signed, and a car full of Hawkstone Lager acquired, we were all done. TFTC!
This checkin to GC3PQ4P LOL #14 - Taekwondo reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Unbelievably muddy today Took me so long to pick my way along the boggy path (pictured) that this’ll probably be my only cache of the day. Still, one more for my LOL collection!
I saw a heron this morning, and it reminded me of a police officer.
Right now, while my house is… not-so-inhabitable… I have a long drive to drop the kids off at school, and this morning it took us alongside the many flooded fields between our temporary accommodation and the various kid drop-offs.
Stopped at traffic lights, I watched a heron land in what would be best-described as a large puddle, rather than in the lake on the other side of the road. The lake, it turns out… was “guarded” by one of those fake heron things.
You’ve seen them, probably. People put them up to discourage territorial birds from visiting and eating all their fish.2 If you haven’t seen them, you might have at least spotted the fake owls, whose purpose is slightly different because they scare off other birds.
Anyway: I found myself thinking… do birds actually fall for this? Like scarecrows, it feels like they shouldn’t (and indeed, scarecrows don’t always work, and birds can quickly become accustomed to them). But clearly they work at least a little…?
Anyway, I found myself reminded of a geocaching expedition I went on outside Cambridge a couple of years ago. At around 6am I was creeping around outside a shopping centre on a Saturday morning, looking for a tiny magnetic geocache hidden behind a sign. I’d anticipated not having to use much “stealth” so early in the day… but nonetheless I kept getting the feeling that I was being watched.
It took me a few minutes until I worked out why: the local Home Bargains had put up a life-size standee of a police officer in just the right position that I kept catching him in the corner of my eye and second-guessing how much my digging-through-the-bushes looked incredibly suspicious!
I did a double-take the first time I spotted the officer, but soon realised he was fake. But the feeling of being watched persisted! There’s clearly something deeper in human psychology, more-instinctive, that – as social animals – gives us that feeling of being watched and influences our behaviour.
There’s a wonderful and much-cited piece of research from 2010 that describes how cooperative behaviour like proper use of an honesty box increases if you put a picture of some eyes above it: the mechanism’s not fully understood, but it’s speculated that it’s because it induces the feeling of being watched.
I reckon it’s similar with birds. They’re not stupid (some of them, like corvids, are famously smart… and probably many predator birds exhibit significant intelligence too), but if there’s something in your peripheral vision that puts you at unease… then of course you’re not going to be comfortable! And if there’s another option nearby5 that’ll work, that’s an easy win for a hungry bird.
You don’t need to actually believe that a scarecrow, a plastic bird, a poster of some eyes, or a picture of a bobby is real in order for it to have a psychological impact. That’s why – I believe – a fake heron works. And that’s why, today, a heron reminded me of a police officer.
1 I guess actual herons can’t tell the difference?
2 Presumably the same technique doesn’t work with sociable birds, who would probably turn up to try to befriend or woo the models.
3 I don’t know, but I do wonder, whether the picture is actually of a police officer or of a model. If I were a police officer and I knew that my likeness was being used at supermarkets and the like, I’d be first to volunteer to any call-outs to anywhere nearby them, so any suspect who ran from me would keep spotting me, following them, at every corner. You get few opportunities for pranks as a copper, I reckon, but this one would be a blast.
4 I wonder if a fake angler is more- or less-effective than a fake heron. Somewhere, an animal psychology PhD student is working out the experimental conditions to answer this question, I hope.
5 Remember: a bird can have a birds-eye view of feeding spots! If one option’s gonna make them feel like they’re being watched by a predator or a competitor, and another nearby option looks almost-as-good, they’re gonna take the alternative!
This checkin to GCAWR04 Take an Allotment Break reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The family and I are staying in Lyneham for a couple of weeks following the flooding of our house (on the other side of Witney). This morning the younger geokid, the geopup, and I came out for a walk to find this geocache as well as to explore Milton-under-Wychwood and tag some of the memorial benches for OpenBenches (1, 2, 3, 4).
We sat near the cache and the geokid immediately found it. Looks like we’re the second signatories of the New Year: somebody beat us to it on 5 Feb! TFTC.
This checkin to GC8X84J Crawley to Minster Loop - #1 Acrux reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
One last cache on this afternoon’s walk before I had to take the geopup off for a doggy bath! We tried a couple of obvious hosts near the GZ before expanding our search and quickly finding its hidey-hole. TFTC!
This checkin to GC7YHDV One with the tree reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
QEF in the third host I tried. SL. TFTC!
This checkin to GC8X88R Crawley to Minster Loop - #12 Zosma reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Walking backwards and forwards past the GZ eventually enabled the geopup and I to spot this very-visible but high-up cache. Soon it was retrieved, the log signed, and returned. Logbook is very full; I had to just initial it.
This checkin to GC8X888 Crawley to Minster Loop - #11 Wasat reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The dog’s walk needed extending to make sure she’s well worn-out and not too-excited for some guests we’re having over this evening, so she and I came and parked on Dry Lane (ironically-named, it seems, as the road was flooded) and walked down to try to find this cache. Unfortunately we weren’t able to find it, this time, but we’ll try again next time we’re in the vicinity.
This checkin to GC45BDD Mirador La Paz reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
My partner Ruth and I are staying at the Meliá hotel down in the city, from which amazingly I was able to get a WiFi connection despite the considerable distance!
As others have observed, the hint is misleading for this cache. Substitute the word “right” in place of the word “left” and the hint makes more sense!
SL, TFTC! And thanks for the great view!
This checkin to GC9PMF7 Crossing the street reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
QEF while on the way down from Taoro Park with Ruth. SL, TFTC!
This checkin to GC1PYFN Parque Taoro reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Ruth and I made several attempts today without success: a muggle was sat nearby in such a way that access to the GZ was obstructed. We took a walk to the nearby Anglican church – whose architecture, if you ignore the volcanic rock, is uncannily like that of Anglican churches in the UK – but then we returned the muggle had very much set up camp and was going nowhere. We attempted to find a way to the cache from the opposite side without luck, and eventually had to give up. 😔
This checkin to GC9MCDM The Queen Of Mystery reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
After solving the riddle yesterday, my partner Ruth and I came up from the seafront to find this cache today. What a delightful spot to hide the cache, and what a wonderful puzzle (and spot of local literary history) with which to bring us here.
SL, FP awarded. Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK. TFTC!
This checkin to GC9PVXZ EL CRÁTER DE LA RAMBLETA reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
My partner Ruth and I were disappointed not to be able to hike any of the trails up here today – they’re all closed – but enjoyed finding both the nearby Virtual and this Earthcache geocaches. The evidence of lava flows (that remain to this day!) are really quite impressive.
