The 10th Annual Conference of the Washington Ornithological Society (WOS) was
a terrific success IMHO. A sincere deep sense of appreciation and gratitude
must be extended to *Jan and Keith Wiggers* and the many volunteers and
members of Skagit Audubon who contributed to making this such an enjoyable and
memorable event for all who attended. I can only barely begin to imagine how
much time and effort is involved in setting up and coordinating one of these
events. The Mount Vernon venue was seasonally prefect, program was excellent,
information packet complete and thorough, and even the dinner meals were
excellent -- just right, good, and not too much -- no left overs, although I
must admit I missed out both on Thursday and Friday night on deserts which
probably says more about everyone else than poky 'ol me '-). Field trip
leaders were excellent, knowledgeable, and helpful and a special thanks must
also be extended to those coordinated 'volunteers' in BC for making the Day 5
Canada trip such a positive, enjoyable, and successful experience.

It was also nice to match up many 'tweeters' with a real face and personality.
As usual -- no one coming close to matching the imaginary 'email' visual :-).
Admittedly, I probably went a little overboard in sporting my 'Tweetie-bird'
ball caps (2) and a little 'Tweetie-bird' decal stuck to my name tag, all of
such paraphernalia and much much more(!) readily available at the totally
classic and complete 'Tweeter's Super Store' in Bellevue (Bellevue Square /
'Warner Brothers Studio Store') :-))) You're lucky I didn't show up wearing
the golden tweetie slippers '-)

I was especially pleased to see a few young budding and enthusiastic birders
in attendance for a change. Namely high school students Jason Starfire and
Sam Terry in addition to some others attending with their families. After
moving from the East Coast to Washington in the early '80s, I couldn't help
but feel disturbed all these years by the virtual complete lack of obvious
birders in the youth department or even much sign of encouragement for such.
I sort of came to perceive, give up, and disdainfully accept as a situation
uniquely PacNW which was characteristically stodgy and stoic with birding
membership reserved for those in 'old fart' department. Not pretty. I need
not say but have to I guess; we've been missing the boat here folks. During
my tenure 'back East', I witnessed (maybe even contributed in some tiny bit?)
in the evolution of the current big household named 'Easterners' today like
Kenn Kaufman, Ted Parker (untimely deceased), Paul Lehman, Peter Pyle, and
many others as they evolved from childhood birding interests, through nurtured
high school hard driven passionate enthusiasm, and onward and upwards today to
stratospheric passionate levels yielding such a voluminous wealth of shared
knowledge and expertise which has become a timeless harvest for us all. Let's
give the kids and youth class a fair shot and encouragement here too, okay?

I detected a pleasantly different mood and more friendly feel at the Skagit
conference and a departure from a level of esteem bestowed to only an elite
few while all the rest of us just muddle along in the 'scrub department' with
feelings of sort of being cast aside in a somewhat insignificant and
condescending way. So now, finally, as the PacNW and especially the Puget
Sound area becomes increasingly more cosmopolitan with a relentless infusion
of 'outsiders' overwhelming the 'insiders', perhaps the old formula can give
way to a new era and we can start to get on with a more social-friendly shared
birding life and experience and start to catch up with much of the rest of the
continent.

Finally, thanks to everyone for letting me fiddle around with such a complete
range of spotting scopes. This was the best 'field test' imaginable for
helping decide on the one which I think will make the best replacement for my
old old Swift stolen in Vancouver, BC back in November. Oh well, it was time
to switch and upgrade anyway.

For anyone who follows 'tweeters' and is not a member of WOS but perhaps
interested now in joining, please write to and/or even send a check to:

Washington Ornithological Society
P.O. Box 31783
Seattle, WA 98103-1783

Membership is pretty cheap ($20 individual, $25 family) and includes the
informative bimonthly newsletter "WOS News". Monthly meetings are held on the
first Monday of each month (Sep-May) at the Urban Center for Horticulture on
the UW campus, Seattle. How can you afford to be a Washington birder and just
limit yourself to one of the mucho-many-overkill National Audubon affiliates
around here and across the state without being a member of WOS anyway?

Richard Rowlett (Pagodroma at aol.com)
47.56N, 122.13W
(Seattle/Bellevue, WA USA)