At 9:40 PM -0800 2/15/99, Derrick Marven wrote:
>i told the couple they should be
>prepared for lots of people to come and see it , just then the man rose
>to his feet and said i don't think that my wife and i could stand that
>amount of hoopla this late in our lives ,i tried for a good hour to
>convince the couple to let me spread the word but they said no and that
>if anybody came around they would take the feeder down.

There is, of course, at least one other course of action you could have
taken: instead of insisting that this couple host a hoard of people that
they weren't willing to, you could have asked permission to return with a
few (two or three) knowledgable birders, who could have corroborated your
identification, and perhaps documented it with photos. That way it becomes
a sighting validated by more than one observer while not grossly impinging
on the privacy of the homeowners. As it is, it's a sighting of questionable
validity, and the homeowners have lost the chance to enjoy their bird
neighbors due to their fear of being overrun by unwanted guests.

Rob Saecker
Olympia