At 7:20 AM -0700 7/26/03, Doug Schonewald wrote:
>I still use acronyms exclusively to take daily observation notes and feel,
>like some, that it is important that birders take the time to learn them.
>Some lists use them, science uses them, and if you don't take the time to
>learn them eventually you will miss something that you wish you hadn't.

I respectfully submit that I can't imagine what I would miss by not
knowing the codes. I'm not entirely against codes, but as Kelly
Cassidy pointed out, there are more than one set of codes out there.
If you subscribe to Birdwest you'll occasionally see five letter
codes. Someone is always trying to re-invent the wheel. The
suggestion to spell the name out first and use codes subsequently
seems like a reasonable compromise to me, given the passion diplayed
on this subject.
--
Rob Saecker
Olympia
rsaecker at thurston.com