Hi Tweets,

Chris Thompson writes:

> Thanks for your reply regarding use of Humphrey-Parkes (H-P)
> terminology. Let me begin by saying that as an expert on this topic, I am
> sad to say that there are few ornithologists who fully understand and
> correctly use the H-P system. Indeed, I have misused it before. This is
> not because the H-P system is too complex or cumbersome to understand
> or use, but rather, I think, results from two causes: (1) few people read
> Humphrey and Parkes 1959 (and 1963) papers, and (2) they rely on
> subsequent synopses of H-P in textbooks or elsewhere (such as the
> article you mentioned in Birding) that misrepresent the H-P system.
(snip)

Headlines in tomorrow's newspaper: Michael Gets His! Crashes And Burns
*Big-Time*! Kids, let this be a lesson to you: when you get in the ring,
don't try to punch above your weight class. '-)

So, something I've thought basically right and useful all these years, Chris
asserts, correctly, is basically wrong and misuseful. And nothing
equivalently useful to replace it. Damn, that bites. That really bites.

To those of you to whom I have espoused this method with such enthusiasm,
please forgive me; though with the best intentions in the world, in doing so
I have been perpetuating a misrepresentation (though a small rebellious
voice mutters that, even as a misrepresentation, it makes more intuitive
sense than the other ways).

To Chris, my apologies for contradicting you and your superior expertise;
the only thing which relieves that particular negligence is that I was
working from popularised material whose very appearance (I felt) in an
edited journal such as Birding guaranteed its validity. Being often rather
intimidated by the opacity-- to this non-scientist, at least-- of much
scientific literature, I did not go to the original papers as you recommend;
I thought the Birding article would be sufficient in itself and, shorn of
technicalities, easier to understand. You were right, I was wrong.

But *something* similar which describes only plumage and plumage-state is
needed for the amateur birder to correct implicit biases and assumptions
carried by the other general terminologies. Cannot the HP or parts of it be,
not misrepresented, but deliberately *adapted* to be a more general system
of ageing and staging birds? If the exceptions are as uncommon as you say,
isn't it possible to draw *some* amateur-accessible generalised methods that
non-scientists can use at the level of serious field-identification? A
little knowledge may usually be a dangerous thing, is often stupid, but
sometimes can provide intuitive direction in the absence of hard fact, and
it seems to me that if such an adaptation is possible, it would be really
useful.

Well, thank you, Chris, I'm glad you posted this: a salutary correction and
a free ticket to enjoy, if that's the word, a real-life paradigm shift --oh
jeez, and now here comes Tom Kuhn to tell me that's a misuse of
philosophy-of-science terminology...geddoudahere, you guys....

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery, and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)