>Sorry about my earlier slip of the finger.
>
>Some may feel this is a waste of bandwidth, but I was intrigued to see the
>full page Seattle Times article on 6/21 about Eugene Hunn (our own SAS "Bird
>Brain"). There is no more than a short sentence or 2 about birds, but it is
>great to see some of the vocations of the local birding community. The
>article (for those who haven't seen it) discusses Dr. Hunn's work on the
>length of lists that can be remembered by a range of classifications and
>cultures. Can anyone remember more than 500 of something? I note the
>elaborate classifications schemes developed in fields like chemistry to
>generalize and thereby allow more items to be recalled in sub-classes.
>
>Charles Vaughan
>cev at rocket.com

Charles, I didn't see the article on Gene Hunn, but I'm intrigued by your
question "Can anyone remember more than 500 of something?" Doesn't this
depend on the definition of "something?" An experienced naturalist can
remember the names (and hopefully something about them) of thousands of
species of plants and animals. How finely would one have to divide this
before 500 became significant? Would remembering 500 species of warblers be
any harder than remembering 500 birds, which would vary much more overall
in size, shape, and color than the warblers would? There are interesting
questions here, although as you acknowledged, tweeters might not be the
appropriate forum, unless we restrict it to birds. If I missed the point,
help me out, Gene.

Oops, I had better add some birding info. If anyone would like to look at
Hermit and Townsend's warblers and a whole array of hybrids between them,
the area around Takhlakh, Olallie and Council lakes west of Mt. Adams is
full of them. You'd need a tape of their song to bring them in for
observation. Either Townsend's or Hermit song works for all. Also, I hear
from Andy Stepniewski that sagebrush areas of Yakima County have *lots* of
Black-throated Sparrows in them right now. This may be the only year when
this is the case, presumably because of drought conditions elsewhere. In
these same areas, some of the normally occurring sagebrush birds are very
scarce this year, presumably for the same reason, the drought here.

Dennis Paulson