Deb Burhinus
Used to be well known! 😎
In fairness Ken, afaia, you have never tried to claim sighting of a bird that hasnt been reliably seen for at least 50 years or so. You or anyone else finding it difficult to get records accepted by the BBRC is not a comparable level of scepticism - did it occur to you btw your non-birding neighbour is actually mistaking your Tawny Owls for Barn Owls ... 😏During my sixty years of “Birding” I’ve found “acute” skepticism not uncommon within the birding community. Unsure if that says “more” about the skeptics than the claimants and it does make me wonder about the skeptics “strike” rate of finds in their general birding life?
I’ve lived at my present abode for 38 years, my next door neighbour 20 years, I’m a birder, he’s not!
Our abodes back onto a narrow strip of woodland, we have a joint hedge which has on occasion roosting Tawny Owls, whereupon exiting roost, they often fly behind or over his garden....he’s never seen one in 20 years!
Conversely over the last two years he’s seen a Barn Owl at least four times, on occasion sitting on a tree opposite his back gate...last seen several weeks ago.
I’ve never! seen the latter here in 38 years!...
I think as far as the moderating of this thread, you have been given way more latitude than the regular members have here in terms of personal attacks and rudeness or just inappropriate, irrelevant comments.You seem to have missed that it has not been that pleasant for others visiting BF who were much more submissive to rudeness than me; they have left not to return. What do you attribute that to? Perhaps the wonderful friends they made here? Or is it the fair shake they got? Or was it all the brilliant ideas and novel suggestions they received? Never saw much wisdom in oneliners outside every fifth fortune cookie. Its fine to say you really don't care and just blame me as the only culprit.
I really don’t know how you have envisaged your role here? You seem to avoid the questions raised by ecologists and biologists on this thread, have been completely dismissive and rude to people like myself of whom it was repeatedly expected to have ‘experience‘ of the IBWO a failure of which according to you, excluded me from the discussion (even though no one else here has experience of this bird). When it seemed some people were attempting to support you, including posting the Jackson video, you immediately attacked them for having ulterior motives in not posting a better quality version.
If you came to educate, why undermine, bully and belittle your potential students? If it was to engage with fellow ecologist, biologists and conservationists, (including myself!) why condemn your peers as being unprofessional, ill-informed and guilty of all sorts of conspiracies against those claiming recent sightings?
This does not seem like rational discourse to me. I wonder if you may have been better served to use a one-sided platform to share your views, one that does not broker any responses?
I do thank you however, for reminding us (least we become complacent) how fragile species and eco-systems are and also reminding us how tragic it is when species apparently are lost to us without a trace. I hope it makes us all more determined to do whatever we can to help habitats and species survive humanity. Surely at least, that is something we can all agree on because I am sure we all share a sadness about the IBWO whether we believe it extinct or near extinction because it is certainly one or the other 😥