Subject: Re: Final Cut (was: Vitriol)
Date: Oct 12 12:10:45 1997
From: Michael Price - mprice at mindlink.bc.ca


Hi Tweets,

Don Baccus writes:

>>I would never want to be accused of being the "thought police" (neither my
>intent or ability), but I'm certain that we can all be civil toward one
>another in our efforts to better understand the birds in our lives.

Agreed! As you will know from previous posts over the last three or four
years, Don, I have always promoted the virtues and advantages of civility
over rancor and tried to achieve it wherever possible, though not at the
expense of flannelmouthing my language. You will also, I hope, acknowledge
that over that same period, I've tried to contribute to that understanding
by posting detailed observations, putting forward more than my share of
theories and hypotheses to account for what I and others see, and asking a
full share of questions generated by my curiosity.

>Somehow some BC birding politics and strong personalities led our
>discussion about funding conservation into strange waters. I don't know
>anything about BC birding politics, and while watching the mudslinging is
>mildly entertaining, if it were me I'd probably have the fisticuffs in a
>less public forum.

When I take a snide, public personal shot from one of the people in the
local society's leadership (Eric Greenwood, speaking ex officio:
"Unfortunately, there are some BC-based subscribers to Tweeters that don't
want to acknowledge the work of these organizations and that don't belong to
them."), I will defend myself equally publicly. I will not tolerate their
doing to my name on this mailing list what they've done to it locally.

Here there is no public forum. There *are* issues here, not personalities,
and if it were up to me, that would be the ground on which discussion and
debate occurs, but the favored tactic here is to make it appear a personal
conflict between personalities: that way serious discussion and the
challenging an official line on those issues doesn't have to be undertaken,
and it becomes easier to portray a critic as a personally-troubled
malcontent, impugning and discrediting what began life as his or her
constructive analysis. Well, experience has taught the hard lesson that a
spade is a spade is a spade, and calling it a dog will not make it bark.

And I would equally mildly disagree that this has no bearing on some of the
issues under discussion: the quality of a birding group's leadership is
sometimes of great importance to the identification and effectiveness of
response to conservation needs of an area. Sometimes, perhaps often, I
wouldn't know, an internal political agenda or consensus can adversely
affect that group's willingness and effectiveness. Ad hominem attacks often
serve as a tactical distraction from these more serious issues. To use a
metaphor I employed in a private post on this issue, it seems as if the
messenger has enough bullets pumped into him, the problems go away.

That said, neither the timing nor the arena of this little episode of
mudwrestling was of my choosing and, like you, I *fervently* hope it is over.

Back to birds. I have put this query out twice before with no response:
third try, then.

Last winter, there was an adult Western light-morph Red-tailed Hawk hanging
aorund Thunderbird Stadium on the UBC Campus that had on its nape a distinct
white circle with an inverted dark equilateral triangle within it, as on
dark-morph Rough-legged Hawk (see plate 15, Hawks, Clark & Wheeler).

Can someone tell me more about this mark, which I've never seen before on a
Red-tail? Is this something common to this or other morphs? *Any*
information would be welcome.

Michael Price We aren't flying...we're falling with style!
Vancouver BC Canada -Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story
mprice at mindlink.net