I'm one of those silent tweeters who would now like to add my ten cents
worth -- in a highly subjective and personal message. This is a warning
to those who prefer more objective or more abstract communication. :-)

I have myself remained silent for two reasons since becoming a new
subscriber about six weeks ago: (1) Birding is a fairly recent phenomenon
in my life, and each new sighting or birdcall (!) is still such a wondrous
thing that sharing the experience would simply bore everyone else; and
(2) as a new birder, I don't know a helluva lot about what I see and hear,
so I have nothing of consequence to offer beyond the experiential and
what that feels like. Lots of questions, yes -- knowledge, no.

Tweeters seems more a forum for committed birders, with life lists at
least 500 birds long, and for professional scientists, i.e. naturalists,
biologists, and ornithologists like my cousin, who works at the
Smithsonian. (Birding runs in the family, yes, but I managed fairly
well to ignore these creatures for almost forty years.)

I very much enjoy reading tweeters messages, whether the language is
informal and personal, or, as in the majority of cases, more objective
and technical. Either way, the messages inform. And I think a separate
bulletin board for yardbirds is a fine idea, but I do have one concern:
the danger of elitism and segregation -- which may not be a problem if
what everyone prefers is precisely that sort of split between the act of
observing and cataloging, and the act of experiencing the moment. I just
think it would be unfortunate to encourage the sort of snobbery that
would make anyone remark, with the appropriate sneering tone, "Tweeters
is for SERIOUS birders."

Now that I read over those last few sentences, I'm even more convinced that
yardbirds is a good idea. Yardbirds for those who want to get more
personal, tweeters for those who don't. And why not subscribe to both
boards to enjoy the spectrum of perspectives? Count me in, yes.

Okay, that's my ten cents worth. Thanks for your indulgence. I'm now
ready for slings and arrows. Fire away. :-)

Lisa

On Wed, 10 Aug 1994, Dennis Paulson wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>