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Oh Ian,
You are such a good and knowledgable chap and I am
sorry to leave you (or any other correspondents), potentially depressed. Thanks
for your kind concern. Yet I'd be very surprised to see any burst of unpleasantness
among us. My message was a small (as in concise, therefore
maybe unintentionally direct) non-personal and non-gratuitous correction. (I have no motivation to be
gratuitous.) The message being mainly motivated as a confirmation
of my earlier message about the bird's name. Nor do I think it shows a lack
of courtesy or respect. It was a simple statement. I have known you too, to substitute correct
information for the not quite correct information of others and so you should.
In our field, people generally appreciate it. The main reason I
sent it to the list, as well as the three alone, is a bit of a line-call, but
seems legitimate to me, being to reduce the likelihood of promulgation. I
believe (though perhaps David can correct me if I'm wrong, although I have
received several enquiries from all around the world relating to comments I have
made on cog-list or b-aus) that as these thing go on an internet archive, in
years to come, or distant countries, people search for and source these messages
for information, so they don't always arrive with the original context. I'd
argue that "A slip of the finger" is a typing or spelling error which should be ignored
but it is quite different from a succession of messages carrying forward a wrong
name of a first record of the bird to the country.
It was however my error to send it twice, the first
version unintendedly shot off as I was editing it to add the second line,
which in case anyone didn't notice, was intended to be at least a tiny bit
humorous. The bird's whole head is grey. And that, between all of us, is I
think, more than the issue deserves.
Philip
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