Subject: Bird-Sighting Skeptic
Date: Sep 13 15:42:45 1996
From: Anna Coles - acoles at u.washington.edu


Dennis Paulson just emailed that he plans to abandon his residency as the
Bird-Sighting Skeptic.

But, Dennis, we've needed you! It's all too easy to convince ourselves
that we've just spotted wonderful rarities.

What we all really need to do is to implant a little Bird-Sighting Skeptic
in ourselves--when we think we see something great and highly unlikely,
pause and let the Skeptic have her say (sort of like the little
Angel-Goofy and Devil-Goofy in the old cartoons--was it Goofy?).

(One point, though--some of us novices don't know when a sighting _is_
highly unlikely. I guess we'd better refer more often to the distribution
maps in the field guides, eh?)
Thanks, Dennis, for being a skeptic. --Anna Coles, Seattle, WA
acoles at u.washington.edu