Karen Juenemann, wrote:

> There's a lot I'd like to do -- I'd like to take more of the
> classes offered by SAS but they are expensive. I'd like to go
> birding in Costa Rica (or Texas even), but haven't been able
> to do that either. Someday....

>


Why be a fashion-victim, instead do the kind of birding your
resources allow.

Personally, I will never (never say never) go to Costa Rica (or Texas
even) to go birding, I'd much rather get down to Gray's Harbour and
look at shorebirds, same old species every time I bet, but there's
more to life than compiling an ABA list. If birders need to see,
400,500,600,700 species why don't they pay Dennis a visit. A trip to
an exotic location to see birds is just as abstract.

I'm definitely biased on this, when I started birding, my friends and
I regularly covered an area of roughly 3-4 square miles. The area is
mostly agricultural, so there was not much "local" variety. However
being on the east coast of Scotland, most of the birding involved
looking for migrants and opened up possibilities for the occasional
rarity - not an end in itself, we got a much delight, possibly more,
seeing common as well as uncommon stuff like Red-backed Shrike,
Bluethroats and Pied Flycachers. Some of the best days birding I will
ever have involved common stuff - for eaxmple spending a morning,
sheltering from a NW gale and watching about 700 Sooty Shearwaters
racing south down the coast, or seeing flocks of Redwing dropping out
of the sky one October (20th 1976 to be exact, up to about 10.30am -
this is from memory. A spiritual experience - I will never forget
it).

The other question to ask is "What do you contribute, by having a
large ABA list ?" My reaction is, other than dropping a few dollars
to local communities in the places you visit - nothing. Regularly
checking your local area, and noting bird numbers, identifying
different races, reporting color banded birds, etc in my opinion is
much, much more useful. I know this is "science", but I don't think
that takes the fun away. When I started birding finding a banded
murre washed up dead on the beach was definitely a major high !!


Why be a me-too when you can be yourself.

Stuart MacKay