This message is in response to a discussion Steve Hallstrom, Dan Victor and
I have been having about the function of yardbirds vs. tweeters bulletin
boards, and what should be considered "of value" to put on either one.

I suppose I would consider anything of value (for tweeters) that increases
our knowledge of birds, whether their biology, their occurrence in the
area, their identification, or whatever. If we have an established theme,
then it doesn't matter if people occasionally wax rhapsodic over their own
experiences or pass on those of others, even when they don't contribute
anything to KNOWLEDGE (of course I'm rationalizing because I was just
guilty of that when I shared my ivory gull sighting--and my white-headed
woodpecker sighting this spring).

I agree with Steve that it doesn't matter if there are silent tweeters; I
don't know how non-threatening a forum has to be to encourage the quiet
ones to speak up. I'm sure this is accomplished in therapy sessions, but
that's not what we're doing here. I know you're a kind and gentle person,
Dan, so I'm glad you are providing an outlet in yardbirds for some who
might have been intimidated by tweeters. By the way, one of my most
enjoyable and moderately intense pastimes is documenting the birds of my
yard, and a new yard bird is just about as exciting as anything in the bird
world for me. My yard list plateaued at 83 species this spring (we've lived
there almost 4 years now), and I'm more than ready for something new! Am I
a closet "yardbird?"

Just to expand on this theme, the message from Charles Vaughan I just
received includes some good stuff, and the only thing that probably keeps
it from being "valuable" is that there is no one to compile such
information or even to judge if it is significant. I too get variable
numbers of birds in my yard, and I sometimes wonder if it is part of a
pattern. A bulletin board would be exactly the way to find out. And
certainly accurate records of arrival and departure dates might eventually
be best monitored through bulletin boards that connected many observers. As
I have written before, both Gene Hunn and Russell Rogers are on tweeters,
and they are doing some of the major compiling of records from this area.
All tweeters (or yardbirds, or whoever you are) have to do is send in
simple messages with first arrival or last departure dates, as well as peak
numbers, for any species that occur regularly around your yard (better
include where you live, which isn't evident from e-mail addresses). And
statements such as "red crossbills are unusually common this spring," if
they come from enough people, have real significance. Or if everyone who
had active hummingbird feeders informed the group where they lived and
which of the two species visited their feeders, perhaps we'd get a handle
on the local distribution of rufous vs. Anna's. Etc.

Dennis Paulson
I live near Thornton Creek in Maple Leaf, in the north part of Seattle.