Burt:

> These are fascinating
> living creatures, and the challenge is to identify them, enjoy their
> beauty, learn about their lives, and stop people from destroying them and
> their habitats.

Jack:
>All right. It's about time we had this out. It has gone around just about
>every other birding organization/group the past year or so. The politically-
>correct notion these days is that "Big R" (recreational) birding is
>tantamount to sleeping with the devil while "Big C" (conservation-based)
>birding is purer than the driven snow.

Ummm...Burt mentioned four non-listing aspects of birding, three of them
recreational. And the rest of us have been talking about fully enjoying
the entire experience of birding, i.e. watching and learning about
common species as well as going off rarity chasing and a bunch of other
stuff which boils down to defining recreational birding as being much
more than the sport of chasing rare birds.

It's true that it's hard to learn a lot about birds without becoming interested
in conservation, but we've not been discussing conservation vs. recreational
birding.

We've been defining good taste :)

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, at (NEW) http://donb.photo.net