Subject: [Tweeters] Re: Birding & Energy Consumption (was: "Life List" /
Date: Feb 6 01:50:59 2010
From: Michael Price - loblollyboy at gmail.com


Hi Tweets

Several correspondents have expressed an impatience with others taking what
may seem at first a critically moral approach in commenting on listing,
travel and energy consumption. Perhaps understandable. But there is a much
broader discussion to be had here on the *quantifiable* size of
bird-listing's carbon footprint (no reason why bird-listing should be exempt
from such analysis), the productive and consumptive economics of birding,
its social and cultural effects, optical/software technologies and several
other aspects I thought of earlier but forgot and it's too late to think of
right now. Damn these late shifts.

And there's my perennial favorite: with so many people birding and spending
so much money to do it since the 1970's, why is birding *still* virtually
invisible to the North American mainstream culture? No birding or birders in
movies (except for 'Rare Bird'---lovely, wryly funny movie, BTW---which was,
naturally, more about picaresque village life in the ridiculously beautiful
location of Newfoundland---hint: though it's politically part of Canadian
federation, I wouldn't suggest calling Newfoundland a 'Canadian' province;
feelings are still a bit sensitive though 1949 seems a long time ago---than
birding itself), none on TV, none in comics---oh, wait, birders were
mentioned (cue Sally Field: "you like me, you really like me.") in Stephen
Pastis's irascibly funny strip 'Pearls Before Swine'*, *but in a way
recalling the stereotyping of the 1940's and 1950's; more memorable was
Garry Trudeau's 'Doonesbury' where he portrayed birding to equal comic
effect, and more sympathetically, through the character of Dick Davenport.
There's a handful of fictional characters*, and so on....

*and who could forget that classical mystery novel, 'Beware the Tufted Duck'
and its equally successor, 'Beware the Laughing Gull', two examples of what
editors call the 'cookie-cutter plot' (as in 'Beware the
Fill-in-the-Blank'). I submit myself as one of the five people in the world
who have read at least one of these two pieces of, um, journeyman plot and
prose to the last page, and I don't know the other four.

Why, for example, when I go to my big-box stores I see large sections
devoted to the resurgent nature-consumptive areas of huntin' 'n fishin', and
trail biking, etc., and nothing at all to birding? Why are there hunting and
fishing cable networks all over the place and nothing, absolutely nothing on
birding to be seen on TV other than Sir Dave's avuncularly brilliant docs
such as 'Life of Birds'? Why is birding so culturally invisible in North
America? In Britain and mainland Europe, birding is not culturally
invisible, and organised birders wield a political influence on conservation
issues there inconceivable to the average North American. And, boy howdy, do
their listers ever know their stuff.

Best wishes

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
loblollyboy at gmail.com

"I feel like a fugitive from th' law of averages!" -- GI Willie
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20100206/00d392cc/attachment.htm