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Re: Un-doing a bird



That's an easy one...ask any Texan if they consider Texas a separate
sovereign country that just happens to be part of the US.

Foreign country, foreign sighting...case closed...

Marie La Salle
----- Original Message -----
From: "shantanu phukan" <phukan@email.unc.edu>
To: <>
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 11:38 AM
Subject: Un-doing a bird


> Dear Listers:
>
> Here is a knotty (and I admit, nutty) ethical question for us birders
> to ponder. How does one annul a life-bird once one has seen it?
> Why would one want to?  Well, a birder-friend and I were sitting down
> to breakfast and planning out the rest of our lives bird-wise when we
> both realized that I have never gone to Texas and thus have no life
> birds in that state. The challenge my friend posed for me was to amass
> a North Amercian life list of 500 (I am upto about 420 now) without
> ever seeing a life-bird in Texas.
>
> We both realized that it would be a lot more fun to embark on this
> project together. The only hitch is that although she has never
> deliberately birded Texas she did see a life bird INADVERTENTLY while
> driving through the state (a Boat-Tailed Grackle that unfortunately
> flew by in front of the car). Now we are wondering how to annul this
> sighting so we can both take up the challenge of amassing a long life
> list without ever counting Texas. Should accidental life birds 'count'
> as much as 'deliberate' ones? Would the ABA masters take a grim view
> of 'un-doing' a bird?
>
>  O.K. so, I am shirking work by spinning off these silly
> thoughts....But doesn't some of the fun of birding lie in setting up
> strange counting goals and strategies?
>
> Shantanu Phukan
>