[extropy-chat] "Bird Brian" - Not!

[Ian Goddard]

--- spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

> > On Behalf Of Ian Goddard...
> > 
> >  In my teens I used to do a lot of bird watching
> > with local groups like the Audubon Society and 
> > other birding enthusiasts. I kept a bird list and
> > did the annual Christmas count and such... ~Ian
> 
> 
> Ian I have become a bird fan in recent years, not
> from learning species but just from noticing the 
> amazing things they do.  The classic birdwatching
> never has appealed to me much because it seems too
> preoccupied with identification of species and 
> especially uncommon species.


 Right. In fact, my last formal bird watching event
was an Audubon Society Christmas count some year in
the early 80s, after which the reduction of the gentle
art of bird watching to the busy sport of bird
cataloging was so palpably repugnant I never went on
an organized bird watch again. It's a good example of
where the actual target activity (watching birds)
becomes so lost in ritual behavior surrounding it that
it no longer exists; all that exists in a Christmas
count is a frantic race to score has many checks on a
list of bird species as possible. 



> Crows and gulls are perhaps the very most common 
> birds around here, so they don't get a lot of 
> attention.  They should.  To me, the point of
> watching wildlife isn't to find the most exotic,
> but rather to really watch, really pay attention
> to see what the beasts are doing.  


 Excellent observations spike! In fact, among birding
enthusiast there's a kind of bird racism that I too
adopted. In its more benign form, average sparrow-type
birds were called LBJs for "little brown jobs." The
meaning was, "nothing much there, forget it." In its
worst form, we'd refer to common birds like crows,
starlings, or house sparrows as "junk birds." Of
course that valuation structure stems from the high
value placed in seeing rare birds. 

 Of course that isn't 'bad' per se, it simply reflects
the given focus of standard bird watchers. If we're
more interested in watching bird behaviors, then that
value structure can fade away. Although that may in
turn place a greater value on birds with higher
intelligence and define 'junk birds' as pigeons. Of
course such a priori value structures can bias our
observations, so being able to step outside of them
can lead to better observations. ~Ian


http://iangoddard.net

"A proposition can be true or false only in virtue of
being a picture of reality." - Ludwig Wittgenstein   

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