Considering Stephen Debus' comments about twitching out of context obscures the
very valid point he was trying to make. Aside from his unfortunate use of
"malaise" as opposed to something less judgmental, my immediate reaction was
that what he was saying was fairly self evidently true. I am an example of
this. I used to co-ordinate wader counts for a state and write up all the
results and do things like that. These days with less time on my hands, if I
do have time for birding I am more likely to spend it going somewhere overseas
looking for new birds. Hence I publish less than I used to - I contribute less
to ornithology.
It's a sad reflection on us birders as a whole that while there are more and
more of us spending time looking at birds there is less and less of value being
published by amateurs. That was Stephen's point. Personally I think one
factor he overlooks is the attitude that comes through from major bird groups
that projects have to have a conservation value to be worthwhile. The idea of
knowledge about birds for knowledge's sake gets ignored and that doesn't do
much to encourage people to publish their observations. Though I accept the
need to qualify for government funding makes the conservation centred approach
necessary.
Here ends the rant about the rant.
Murray Lord
Sydney
==============================www.birding-aus.org
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