Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell.com!ucsd!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!midway!delphi!bob
From: bob@delphi.uchicago.edu (Robert S. Lewis, Jr.)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Indoor birds and birdwatching
Message-ID: <1991Jan25.222916.4842@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: 25 Jan 91 22:29:16 GMT
References: <21586@netcom.UUCP> <1001@cfiprod.UUCP>
Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator)
Reply-To: bob@delphi.UUCP (Robert S. Lewis, Jr.)
Organization: University of Chicago
Lines: 47

In article <1001@cfiprod.UUCP> susans@cfiprod.UUCP (Susan Scheide -CFI-) writes:
>In article <21586@netcom.UUCP> jfh@netcom.UUCP (Jack Hamilton) writes:
>>I received a number of replies to my posting about Senegal parrots and
>>lories.  Thank you.  I also got some mail, of varying degrees of
>>politeness, telling me that this is not the group to discuss such things.
>>
>	Ignore those putzes!  Most pet bird owners remember to put "Indoor"
>	in their subject line, but the vast majority of "birders"
>	NEVER put "outdoor" in their headers!
>
>	It's a free net, and this is an old and tired argument.  I
>	say if the birdwatchers are that intolerant, they make up
>	a new group and stop picking on indoor bird lovers.


Rumour has it that the birdwatchers started this newsgroup, and the
birdkeepers invaded.  Then, when some birdwatchers began to object to
the postings of the birdkeepers, the birdkeepers kindly volunteered to
include the word INDOOR in their subject headings.  This did not
please all the birdwatchers, and periodically the same, rather tired
dispute erupts, usually in response to the posting of some innocent
newcomer who is unaware of the INDOOR convention.  

I am a birdwatcher, and I have mixed feelings about the practice of
keeping birds as pets, since it may, in some cases, encourage the
capture of wild birds, and therefore may pose a threat to some wild
bird populations.  However, I realize that there are differing
opinions on the matter and that sometimes one can discover very
interesting things about bird behavior by observing birds in
captivity.  Therefore, I, like some (many?) other birdwatchers in this
group, prefer to keep the group open to birdkeepers (and falconers and
rehabilitators and, what the hell, duck hunters if they have something
interesting to contribute) as well as to birdwatchers.  I think the
INDOOR convention is convenient, but really rather unnecessary since
there are rarely more than a half-dozen articles posted per day, and
it is not very difficult or time consuming to type "n" whenever an
article's subject heading indicates that the article's contents are
not interesting to the reader.  So please, why can't we just be civil
and forget this little dispute?  It's so much easier only to have one
newsgroup to look through--and, even though the INDOOR postings are 
usually completely uninteresting to me, every once in a while one of
these postings contains something I find worthwhile to know.  The
value of these occasional interesting postings surely outweighs the
very minor inconvenience of typing "n" three or four times a day.  
And were the groups separated, I would never take the time to read the
pet group, and therefore might miss out on something valuable.  I vote
for keeping the group as it is.