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Nutshell Kingdom: Common Sniping: How Birders Fight
2007
From "Anne":
"Sam",
Phase or Morph? Who cares? No one is buying the Roughleg or the Blue Ross's anyway. Or the Clay-colored Sparrow, white fronted Goose, Western Kingbird or the 7 other Ross's.
I think I speak for many across the country that have grown tired of your various postings to the dozens of lists that you so proudly subscribe to. If it isn't your perky, oh-so-helpful emails letting us all know about the winter finch forecast or where to find some other piece of information (I think I even read it forwarded to the North Dakota list!), it is your absolute fictitious list of sightings. I'm not suggesting that you give up birding, but it would be great if you'd give up posting about your birds, since they are so often unbelievable, meaning only those that don't know better believe you. If your intent is to wow the novice birding crowd, then job well done! However, for those that have been birding for more than a few finch invasions, please, either carry a camera and take lots of pictures, or shut the fuck up.
From "Sam":
Hi Everyone,
Before I give some sighting details, I'd like to thank all of you who have sent me emails off-list supporting me after receiving that bit of invective from "Anne" the other day. I truly appreciate your words, though I assure you that that type of thing hardly bothers me. For whatever reason, the occasional person finds it necessary to try to discredit someone in a public forum, and I certainly won't speculate about the true reasoning behind that or what might be going on in someone's life that would cause such strong feelings, especially since I have never heard of or met this person. That said, many have refound many of the good birds I have reported over the months/years so I need not concern myself with someone who merely attempts to minimize the effort of time and energy I regularly put into my birding exploits. At the earlier request of the moderators, please let's not create discussion resulting from my words here.
Back to the birds! I got out just after sunrise this AM at Fort Smith Park in Arlington and (re?)found a COMMON YELLOWTHROAT at the same place I had one on October 26. It was getting late for northern VA then, but this is quite late from info I have. It's behind the bird stream just off the trail that enters the woods. Also present was my first-of-season FOX SPARROW feeding below the large cedar tree near the stream. There were good numbers of all species around, likely increasing following yesterday's front.
And below is my entirely fictitious list of birds noted this morning! LOL! ;-)
From "Rob":
Sorry, "Sam", along with (I think) many others, I agree with "Anne".
