Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 21:11:36 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Steve Huy Subject: Re: Introduced Birds - A Naturalist's View MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Yes, its true that some people think of such things from the point of how invasives will affect people. Yet, you should realize that some people do think of these things with the point of how we may have screwed up the natural order. While starlings would likely have ended up here on their own eventually, we did introduce them. And while some people do worry about the mess on their cars each morning there is an impact on native birds species that concerns some of us. Certainly monk parakeets can have an effect on people (particularly when that messy nest shorts the wires on the pole they chose) but perhaps some people have a concern about the effect on native species. Not that I can think of much competition with monk keets and native birds. That kind of thinking is very one-sided, there are people that would like to get rid of starlings, pigeons, house sparrows and mute swans for very valid and not so selfish reasons. Sure, birds are adaptable, but we do have the potential to foster a quick growth of an invasive species that may happen too quickly for the native species to adapt. I only asked about the other species because I though perhaps there was something I didn't know. I didn't realize until now (or had forgotten) that house finches aren't native to this area. I wasn't being trying to be obnoxious about it. Steve Huy Middletown, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================