Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 10:04:20 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Bob Mumford Subject: Re: Some thoughts on the Thoughtless MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A couple of questions and comments re the inappropriate behavior last weekend on Hoopers Island: 1. How does anyone know that the culprits were "real" birders, e.g., members of MOS, ANS, ABA or NAS? They may well have been curious snoopers who happened by, very casual birders, or even newspeople pursuing a local story. 2. How many "baddies" are we really talking about, other than driving up the driveway? Three? If people were casual birders who heard second or third hand about the bird and do not subscribe to MDOsprey, one might be a little more forgiving of their driving into the driveway. 3. If there were really more than 50 cars in the area during the weekend, how is it possible that none of us "real" birders got the license plate numbers of the culprits or spoke to them about their behavior? Were the "real" birders oblivious, timid, or not present when the miscreant behavior took place? A suggestion: when a bird like this one appears, large numbers of birders are expected, and the home/land owners have specific rules, why not post a sign with those rules. This might prevent the inadvertent violation of the ground rules, but it will never, of course, teach common courtesy and respect. One of us birders ought to make and post the sign, with the permission of the owner. Before we beat ourselves black and blue that one of "us" misbehaved, we ought to stop and realize that there are thousands of people who look at birds who are not members of any organized birding group and have never read or even thought about ABA's rules of birding etiquette. We can, however, help such people with friendly and courteous suggestions if we see them stepping over the line. Bob Mumford Darnestown ========================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ========================================================================== ==========================================================================