I've been participating, in some way, on Tweeters since 2004. I only know that because when I signed up, I printed out a hardcopy of my password and all of the guidelines because of my general distrust, based on ignorance, of computers. Still mostly ignorant after all these years, I have no clue as to what a list owner, list processor, or list server is. Like a munchkin in munchkinland I've been skipping down the yellowbrick road (actually mostly gravel) without too much thought about who, behind the curtain, might be in charge of the place.

So thank you to the Wizard's of Tweeters for providing this great public service, however you do it. I especially value the clear and broadminded Charter and Guidelines which allows for the most diverse and interesting postings of any other 'birding' list I've visited. And also for keeping Tweeterland largely free of disruptive (flying monkey's) discourse, without making it sterile.

Also thanks to Tweeters contributors to all the interesting post's; from feeder watchers, to scientist citizens and citizen scientists, general natualist's, lister's of various sorts, to creative writers, writers of sub-standard bird poetry (like mine), or whatever. It's all good.

This year I recieved quite a few post replies from self-proclaimed 'lurkers' on tweeters. I thought that was interesting. Who know's how many lurketh out there in tweeters? Not that I'm much of a quantitative guy, but a lot more people read tweeters than post maybe. Tweeter's gets around. It's a pretty cool deal. Happy New Tweeters Year.

Jeff Gibson
Lurking in Everett Wa