I appreciate your input, Lisa and Jackie. It's good to hear from previously
silent members of these networks, so we know the stuff is actually being
looked at and thought about by someone. Parenthetically, I write as if I've
been doing this all my life, and in fact I just got hooked into e-mail less
than a year ago (and maybe "hooked" is the word for it); this strikes me
as pretty funny.

I think one important function of tweeters, even for people with little
knowledge of or experience with birds, is to ask questions. No one should
think less of anyone else on a bulletin board if they ask an elementary
question (the "e-mail etiquette" that I have read about in several
articles), and there's usually one or more people willing to answer it.
Since there is a huge spread of knowledge and experience among us, there
are always people who know a bit more than you do, and maybe they can
answer one of your questions. Then there are others who can answer one of
*their* questions, and so on. That's the way it oughta be.

I wish there didn't have to be a separation between yardbirds and tweeters,
because I know they will have a lot in common. After more thought, and
contrary to what I wrote before, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to keep
them together, and only effect a separation if a lot of messages had too
little import to the group as a whole. Stuff about what's going on in our
yards really does overlap with stuff about the composition of migrant
shorebird flocks at Grays Harbor, where to find three-toed woodpeckers,
the food habits of peregrine falcons, or the definition of Neotropical
migrants.

My only concern would be if we had a lot of postings such as "the
chickadees in my yard sure are cute," or "it was wonderful being out in the
salt air with the shorebird flocks swooping by," I feel exactly the same
way, but I probably wouldn't share it by e-mail, as both mailboxes and the
network systems themselves really can get overburdened. But I do
think--after these recent exchanges--that there is a lot of latitude in
what tweeters can contain.

Dennis Paulson

>
\ >
/\ >
--/ /_ >
--\ \ >
\/ >
/