>Dennis, What's wrong with the "virtual" Ross' gull you've be enjoying on
>tweeters? That oughta be enuf for a veteran ornithologist...... Just add
>another checkmark on your virtual life list, print out the messages and
>put them in your virtual field notebook, and you can get back to
>grading those papers.
>
>Like Russell Rogers, I had to be concerned only with my wife listening to me,
>and seeing thru my excuses. As of last Friday, we're firstime grandparents,
>so now she doesn't even bother with me; kid's got all her attention.
>Interesting.
>Peter

Peter, if I'm going "virtual," at least I want a virtual image to go along
with the text. I can envision a future in which we'll all open our
computers in the morning, gain access to today's latest videos of the rare
(or all?) birds around the country (or the world?), some of them in real
time from strategically placed bird-documentation stations, and merrily add
to our virtual life lists--much better looks than we could have got at the
scene, with voice-overs about natural history and patterns of occurrence,
and cameo appearances by Roger Tory Peterson (or his successors). It would
be easy never to leave your office, or den, or wherever the magic box
resides.....

But, to counter that insidious pressure, I actually went into the field
yesterday. Because of peer pressure, social facilitation, and a realization
that the weekend looked inopportune, I followed the transcascadian
migration pathway of many of our local birders to McNary Dam to see IT. A
friend who we encountered there said "I didn't know you were a twitcher." I
answered, "I'm not; I wanted to see the Ross' Gull!" More later, if I can
indeed get out from under the burden generated by a day's absence from work
(not the least of which are the 63 e-mail messages that came scrolling onto
my screen......).

Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416