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April 2014

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Subject:
From:
Haans Petruschke <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Haans Petruschke <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 1 Apr 2014 17:48:04 -0400
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Thanks Joe, I agree

A few of points beyond curmudgeonly behavior on the part of some.

1. A good April 1 post requires planning.  It cannot be done spur of the
moment or else it ends up being something like reporting an Ivory-billed
Peckerwood. Lame.

2.  The person doing the post must have a high level of visibility and
credibility in the community.  I don't really qualify anymore because I
only post a handful of times a year.

3. It must border on being believable, but, be a bit beyond.  What this is
varies, but the idea is to just suck people in.  Make it just plausible
enough that even experts will question it even though it is really a 1 in a
billion chance of being real.

4. It really helps if you have cooperation or collaboration.  A classic was
when I posted a Boat-billed Heron at Shipman Pond and Joe Hammod
photoshopped a picture which he posted as a confirmation of the sighting,
having charted a helicopter to travel several hundred miles in 90 minutes
after my report. Fun!

While I don't post much I do still read the list serve posts daily.  I
think another reason for the lack of fun is the community has changed.  The
Ohio Birds List Serve rarely has any interesting discussion as it did a
decade ago, and if you do post a non sighting you get plenty of hate mail.
 Also the Ohio birding community has become quite divided or fictionalized
in the past 4 years or so.  When it was a private entity run by VWF III,
discussion and having fun was encouraged.  Now birding has become, for
some, an economic interest and so nothing which might discourage interest
is in any way received without protest.

Finally a whole lot of the bird related discussion had migrated to
Facebook.  We have some excellent groups here in Ohio and our state is on
the leading edge of this.  I was hoping to see something there.  I would
have done something myself but did not have time because I'm in the middle
of transferring computers.

Haans


On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 5:17 PM, Joe Faulkner <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Fellow birders with and without a sense of humor,
>
>      It appears that a reasonably harmless tradition on this list serve has
> been stomped to death like a wounded pigeon on a New York side walk.  I
> speak, of course, of the bazaar sightings and events often posted on April
> 1st by some of the veteran  birders on this list serve.  I personally
> thought they were fun, and for the most part, quite harmless.  If a few
> beginning and apparently gullible birders got fooled and chased something
> that wasn't there, then too bad.  That's what April Fools Day is all about.
>  I fooled several of you and my good friend Rick Taylor into believing that
> my dog was eaten by a Great Horned Owl.  He stayed up all night trying to
> figure out how to keep me from killing the owl, and called me a very bad
> name when he found out the truth.  I got many sympathy emails about that
> dog.  Rick and I are still friends, and the dog is fine.
>      Please note that the well regarded NPR does a April Fools day story
> every year, that fools a lot of people, including me.  Two of my birding
> colleagues have already told me that they looked for April fools posts
> today, and were disappointed when they didn't find any.
>      As I recall the composition of this group, we are all mature (mostly)
> adults(mostly) who can take a joke (mostly).  So, I am personally hoping
> that next April 1, there will be a few more bazaar sightings and bazaar
> events that fool a few gullible people.  If they are beginning birders,
> they would still have access to calendars , and would know, just like the
> rest of us, that it is April Fools Day.
>
> Joe in the woods
> Somerset, Ohio
> Perry County
>
>   By the way, I found a NESTING SNOWY OWL at the Perry County Wilds, but
> chose not to post it.   Didn't want anyone driving down here and disturbing
> the nesting owl.
>
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