Dennis Paulson's excellent message largely speaks for itself, but a
couple of comments may be helpful.

Dennis said,
> Everyone who sends in their sightings sends them in in good faith, and I
> intend my critical assessment of them to be educational, not discouraging.
> I know it hurts feelings; I'm sorry.

It's important for people to recognize that when they report a "bird
fact," or a supposed "bird fact," they're entering the realm of science,
and they have to raise their skepticism by an order of magnitude while
lowering their ego-involvement by the same amount. When we report
supposed facts to our scientific colleagues, we expect the highest
standards of skepticism, so we muster all the supporting evidence we
can. At the same time, you can't feel you're being personally attacked
if someone doubts you and asks for additional evidence. A lot of people
on Tweeters are evidently scientists of one kind or another who
understand how the game is played; nonscientists reporting their bird
sightings could get mightily offended if they don't understand this. As
Dennis says, criticism is meant to be educational and to maintain the
ideal of "truth"--not to be offensive.

Dennis also said,
> Boreal chickadee was reported from Mt. Spokane, Spokane Co. To my
> knowledge, they are not known to occur in that county. Grasshopper sparrow
> was reported from Cusick, Pend Oreille Co. To my knowledge, they are not
> known to occur in that county or even in the habitat (moist meadows) that
> characterizes Cusick. In both of these cases, the distance from known
> breeding sites is not huge, but--in fact--these would be the first reports
> of these species from these well-birded sites.

Since I'm not very familiar with much of the state, and time-limitations
make me a much more casual birder than I'd like to be, I wouldn't have
known these things. And many tweets are real novices, just encountering
the tougher identification problems. So I think it's very important for
our more knowledgeable bird aficionados to immediately raise their
questions and doubts about reports on Tweeters, in the scientific spirit I
just referred to, so supposed bird facts can be checked on. This should
emphasize, for everyone, the importance of keeping good field notes on
anything unusual enough to report on Tweeters; if an observation is
questioned, you'll want to have excellent notes, to explain your
identification, recognizing that those notes could also be used to show
that your identification was wrong.

Burt Guttman guttmanb at elwha.evergreen.edu
The Evergreen State College Voice: 360-866-6000, x. 6755
Olympia, WA 98505 FAX: 360-866-6794

Reunite Gondwanaland!