Subject: Re: comment on scientific abstracting service
Date: Jan 13 08:00:31 1997
From: "S. Downes" - sdownes at u.washington.edu


Jon,
I agree that the abstract postings should continue and I have choosen to
post to tweeters rather than you privately because I strongly believe that
even if you are only a "birdwatcher" your knowledge of the hobby can be
enhanced by knowing somewhat about the scientific knowledge of that
particular bird you are chasing. Hopefully nobopdy on Tweeters have lulled
themselves into being strictly a ticker (just counting a bird without
observing it),if somebody is truly is interested in birds and lovres to
watch hem then they should also love to learn about their biology and
behavior. Remember birds get preserved and conserved because biologists
choose to study and discover new infomation on the habits and habitats of
these species. If this information was not released to the public
(including tweeters) these species ewoulfd not be in numbers great enough
to observe them regularly. I'm a wildlife bilogy student and although some
articles I get a chance to read in full most I don't and I really
appreciate Jon's efforts (selfish or not). Afterall alot of activities we
participate in are for selfish reasons but they still help. Examples
include CBC's (participants all want to get a big species list for the day
yet in the process survey data for CBC's are gathered that can be used for
later studies). In my personal opinion I would not mind seeing more people
take up Jon's initiative (afterall if you don't have time there is a key
called "delete" or "next").

Scott Downes
sdownes at u.washington.edu
Seattle WA