It seems there is a campaign against David Barrett’s twitter accounts, especially the Manhattan Bird alert, trying to discredit him and encouraging people to stay away from his account. I find this campaign totally unfair to David.
In a recent internet article, the author mentioned 4 reasons for boycott the alert. I will talk about each one separately. 1- “Started advertising T-Shirts.” To the best of my knowledge, all the non-rare-bird-related tweets are added after sunset, so it would not bother birders, most of whom turn off the alert notification at night anyway. He also posts photos and videos of birds after sunset for the same reason. What is wrong with promoting T-shirt that has a photo of a bird on a birding site? It has to be a good idea to raise awareness for the world of birds anyhow. Beside, I read in one of the tweets that for each T-shirt sold, the seller offers few dollars as a donation to one of the birding organization. This is a good deed. 2- “Promoted commercial Owl Walks that point flashlights at owls and uses excessive audio playback.” The ethics of bird watching is very controversial and the birding community is deeply divided over these issues. I am not going to discuss them here. But to criticize David for promoting Birding Bob’s walks seems unreasonable to me. Birding Bob is responsible for most of the rare birds alert on Manhattan Bird Alert, especially the tweets about owls in the last couple of months. On some days, I only read his tweets about rare birds and none else. He goes on birding walks almost every day and finds things himself. He doesn’t need Manhattan Bird alert more than Manhattan bird alert needs him. I have never gone on any of Bob’s walks and my encounters with him last only for few seconds where we exchange Hello’s only. We never talk birding politics. But I heard a lot from other birders about his walks and they do appreciate what he offers the birding community. 3- “Reported owls with exact locations, which resulted in the over birding of some owls, especially a specific Northern Saw-whet Owl. David's guidelines say post about any bird including all owls.” Another controversial issue and it happened that I disagree strongly with it. I believe the birding experts (including eBird experts) had this policy wrong. I believe every birder have the right to see owls. Our focus should not be focused on hiding the location. It should be on educating the public on the proper viewing protocol. When rare or vagrant bird appears anywhere, the birding experts list the exact location and remind each other of the protocol. It has happened last few days with the Golden-crowned Sparrow and last year with the Great Gray Owl. It seems the experts would do all they can to get on rare birds they have not seen before even if it means to do things slightly different from what the code of ethics stated. Well, those new birders who have never seen any owl are like the experts who have never seen a Great Gray owl or Golden-crowned Sparrow. The birding community should help them get on those owls and educate them how to view them. This is a double standard in my opinion. 4- “Promoted the feeding of ducks on The Pond.” This is another example of where education went wrong. Many people (non-birders) love to feed birds in the park but they are not aware of the danger of giving birds the wrong food. These people will continue to do so regardless of what the birding community thinks of them. When I see a post in the park saying “don’t feed ducks” I laugh, because I know people will not follow such order. The park department came up with a smarter idea. They started putting post on what the proper food to feed ducks and other birds, so people can enjoy feeding birds without hurting them. This is a great idea. Manhattan Bird alert simply did that. It is the smart way. Finally, none of these reasons are valid one to declare war on any of David’s twitter accounts. I believe these accounts are the best thing that happened to NYC area birders in a long time. And the fact that the numbers of followers to each account keep rising is an indication of their importance to the birding community. -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
