Mr. Wood

Norm has warned you to behave yourself on this list and here you are again acting like a three year old. I suspect that you’ll be hearing from Norm again for this infraction. I would normally expect someone who is educated enough to have “EARNED” a Ph D to have learned how the peer review process works and how to have a meaningful and productive discussion in a civil manner without getting into name calling the moment someone questions something that you report. Since some of what you wrote directly concerns me, I think that I have a right to respond. So here goes:

> 1.  I have noticed that people are rather "uppity" in this area, and not as friendly 
> as Mr. Saunders lets them on to be.  

The unfriendliness of the list that you perceive is something that you have also “earned” through the rude and obnoxious comments that you make out of the blue to postings from others. The post the other day about “the High Priests” striking again in regards to the Washington post misidentifying a Great Black-backed Gull as an albatross is a prime example. 

> I'm sorry that I am from Maine and we are more cynical and sarcastic there, 
> and I'm sorry that you can't take a little sarcasm.  

Making cynical and sarcastic comments to people that don’t know you from Adam is anything but friendly. How is anyone to know that you meant what you said ‘in good fun’ without knowing you and understanding your personality? It’s OK for you to respond in this manner but when someone see you on the NCR trail and makes a sporting comment about the sports team on your jacket you take great offense. Can you be more hypocritical than that?
 
> The fact is, no one tells you that you couldn't have seen a Connecticut warbler in 
> a "friendly tone".  
> 2.  How does my being told, "You couldn't have seen a Wood Thrush..." make ME look bad?

This is where you directly attack me. When you posted about finding a Connecticut Warbler last week, I wrote you a message suggesting that you reconsider your ID. It was not rude or accusatory in any manner. I simply provided information to show you that this species migrates out of the US in winter to South America and that I was unable to find any other previously documented sightings of this species in the Continental US during the period of time of your sighting. I provided you with links to information on the species to help you with the process. I was trying to help you find the right answer to your puzzle. NOTHING in what I wrote could be construed as an attack. Your response was to say that you saw what you saw and you were going with that. In fact, you have claimed that you were basing some of this on two previous winter sightings from New York, one of which was another of yours. Having NO IDEA what you could have seen since you started by saying that you had considered Ovenbird, Fox Sparrow and Connecticut Warbler before coming to your conclusion, I could offer no suggestions because you were all over the map. Repeatedly posting reports of birds that are, let us say, very questionable at best makes you look bad, especially when you refuse to believe that you could have made in error.
 
> 3.  If I'm not an "advanced birder", I don't know what I am.  I'm certainly past 
> beginner and > intermediate.  I've birded with…  I've never claimed to be an 
> expert.  Yet many on this list have, including those that told me, "you couldn't 
> have seen a ...".  Those and the record people are the type I refer to as 
> the "High Priests of Local Birding".  I'm sorry if I offended anyone; on the other 
> hand, does anyone ever consider that the person they tell this to may be 
> offended upon hearing > it?  All this is supposedly in the name of science.

First of all, dropping names of the people that you have birded with certainly does not eliminate the possibility that you are still a beginning to intermediate birder. You have obviously claimed to know more than some of the best birders in the state, so that certainly would insinuate a claim of expertise. You also seem to have a history with dislikes to records committees, as many of your sarcastic remarks are directly aimed at these groups. Perhaps because you have had your identification skills called into question in the past has bruised your ego? Instead of learning better skills in identification from the experience, you took it as a personal assault on you as an individual because you weren’t a part of the record’s committee’s ‘cronies’, as you put it yourself. Have you ever considered that you simply have a lot to learn about the identification process of birds and that your skills still need to be honed? 

Allow me to use the following submission to the Utah Record Committee as an example. You claimed to have seen a Broad-billed Hummingbird in Utah in August of 2004. In fact you actually had a photo of the bird that you submitted with the documentation. The committee looked at the photo and advised you that you had misidentified a Black-chinned Hummingbird. The vote was 0-7 in rejecting the submission. Here is the report:

http://www.utahbirds.org/RecCom/2005/2005_02Summary.htm

Your reaction was to take this as a personal assault because your peers shot you down. MDOSPREY isn’t the only list in which you have taken this stance, is it doctor?

> 4.  I would think that if I have to learn to live with "live with this community of 
> Maryland birders" that you would all have to learn to live with me as well.  I'm 
> not like you and I can tolerate a lot.  I would think that if you all are friendly as 
> so willing to teach what you know, that you could easily tolerate someone like 
> me.

Once again it is all about Richard Wood here. On March 10th you wrote a post speaking down to those that you call ‘non-scientists’ and their lack of understanding of peer review process, but you don’t want your reports reviewed by your peers. On March 12th you make a remark to the “high priests” of birding which you admit in your own words refers to records committees and their members. On February 16th you wrote a post blasting records committees in general, and made specific reference to an individual on one of these committees. You want the world to conform to your ideals and play by your rules, but you don’t want to play by the rules set down others. It’s OK to berate others on the list but no one is allowed to question anything that you post. Seems fair to me. 


> P.s. I'm not changing my signature.  It took me a lot of hard work to EARN my 
> degree and I am proud that I did earn it, without getting any breaks along the 
> way.

I think I speak for most of the people that you have infuriated since joining this list last year. We don’t want you to go away. We would like you to learn some humility and understand that WE ALL make errors in bird identification. There are no exceptions. Allow those in this community to help you grow and become a better birder. Learn from those who are willing to teach. There are many outstanding birders in the area that would be more than happy to share their skills and knowledge with you, if you are willing to receive it. This is going to take some serious fence mending on your end since you have caused a lot of hard feelings. Short of that, if you wish to continue on the course that you have set out on so far, we would rather you simply crawled back under the rock from which you emerged and stop bothering all of us. The list was a lot friendlier before you started spouting off.

Edward Boyd
Westminster, MD