Subject: Re: migrant traps
Date: Jan 13 09:09:31 1995
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


Thanks for remembering that we discussed migrant traps before, Deborah.
There has been a lot of discussion that one of the things that can cause
problems on bulletin boards is that new members are constantly coming in
and wanting to discuss stuff that is old business to the veterans. This is
a great example, and we will have more all the time. This is not a value
judgment--there's nothing wrong with exposing a whole new bunch of people
to the same stuff. It would be great if it was really easy to acquire "old
business" from the archives by simple searches, which it isn't; if we had a
search capability, in this case "migrant traps" could have sufficed. And,
of course, if everyone was knowledgeable enough to do so. The problem is
that, not knowing when the material was discussed, you don't know where to
look in Tweeters archives. As the BB goes on for a longer and longer time,
just searching manually for particular files gets to be onerous. Maybe Dan
will correct me on this.

Anyway, this discussion was in May 1994, when there were migrants streaming
through Malheur Refuge but not through Washington, just as you commented,
Dave. There was spirited discussion about *why* we don't have migrant
traps in WA, even though they're all over the place in OR and CA. I agree
with Dan Stephens that Douglas Creek and other riparian situations in
eastern WA can at times be full of migrants; I've seen the same at
Discovery Park TWICE in my 27 years in Seattle. But there's no place in
this state, as far as we know, where you can go in the first week of June
or the first week of September and know you're going to find some
out-of-range cosmic bird. I have our previous postings on disk and will
submit it for publication in the next WOSNEWS for general interest. I am
also attempting to send it as a file directly to Dave, and if our computers
are compatible, you should have it before you can say
"ohnotoomuchemailtoreadasusual."

How's that for service?

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