Hi Tweets,

Richard Rowlett says:
> I too had kind of wondered from where and why the terms "basic" and
> "alternate" suddenly came into vogue and general usage. It was like one
> morning I woke up and suddenly you were "politically incorrect" if you dared
> use the simplistically descriptive and more familiar terms "breeding" and
> "non-breeding" with degrees of "molt" and ageing tossed in as need be.

I'd like to suggest that there's nothing politically or apolitically correct
about this terminology, but once again I suspect, from context, that the
term 'politically incorrect' is being used yet again to substitute for 'I
learned the old way and I'm comfortable and I don't wanna change, etc.'. The
reason it's more useful (and until a better system comes along, I'll be an
unashamedly enthusiastic advocate of the Humphrey-Parkes terminology) is
that it's simply specifically and accurately descriptive of a bird's *actual
plumage* than than adjectives such as 'breeding', 'winter', 'nuptial', etc.
which carry explicit and implicit assumptions about lots of other things
than the actual state of the bird's plumage, and which often lead to
semantic and logical absurdity at complete odds to birders' professed
insistence on accuracy. How, for example, can one see a 'winter'-plumaged
Western Sandpiper in August? (one doesn't: one sees a winter-plumaged bird
in December, January and February--but one *can* see a Basic-plumaged bird
in August), or the case of a first-year male American Redstart in
'non-breeding' plumage which sired a brood of four young? A non-breeding
plumaged bird shouldn't be able to breed according to the internal logic of
the terminology, but a First Alternate male can do just fine, thanks. Other
like examples of such silliness abound.

Second, I would have thought a logical and efficient system of aging birds
would appeal to birders more than the 'seasonal/breeding' terminology since
it enables them to identify a bird better by placing it specifically in its
molt-sequence, hence aging it more accurately. I've found that aging an
unfamiliar-looking bird is 80%-90% of the way to identifying it,
particularly in shorebirds and gulls, say. Other than the aforementioned
comfort, Why would anyone want to stay with the previous terminology with
all its confusions and often-irrelevant implicit assumptions when a cleaner,
more accurate system is available? Please don't tell me that birders' search
for clarity is limited only to better bins and scopes!

>The more scientifically (politically?) correct terms ("alternate" and
> "basic") do however lead to some confusion amongst birders of varying levels
> of interest and expertise as it is easy to sometimes get the two turned
> around or just blank out and forget which one is which.

Richard, this is way too late to be of help to me; where were you when I
needed this argument of mental confusion in my high school algebra class? '-)

> I find the terms a
> little hard to grasp because, at least to me, when taken a face value,
> "alternate" implies that this is a plumage differing from something that is
> more familiar or common or *basic* even, while "basic" implies something that
> I'm 'basicly' not really sure what it implies.

Exactly! Except for the other relatively specialised plumage, Juvenal, many
birds *are* in a basic plumage except when they develop the other
specialised plumage, Alternate, for courtship display. Except for juvenal
plumage, a bird's gonna either be in Basic or Alernate, or is molting from
one to the other for the rest of its life. Except for Rock Doves, with their
one plumage, what could be simpler?

> At least that seems to be my
> gut reaction when I see or hear the terms and then find myself having to call
> a 'time out' to play mental word games sorting them out.

Me, too, until the system clicked in sometime in the early mid-1980's; no
way I'd go back, after that.

> Probably like many
> birders in general, I am far from being up on the cutting edge of scientific
> correctness even as many of us strive to as best we can, or at least amongst
> our peers, present the appearances that we are.

Too modest, Richard: your pelagic reports which are so wonderful to read
demonstrate confident understanding and a wide range of knowledge in
combination with an obvious willingness to learn from your observations that
puts you way further up that 'cutting edge' (I still can't read that term
without thinking of iodine--nngh!) than you profess.

Michael Price When I found out that seven of my years
Vancouver BC Canada was only one of theirs,
mprice at mindlink.net I started biting absolutely everything.
-Max Carlson (Ron Carlson's dog)