Re: audubon & thanks

[Katrina Knight <kknight@epix.net>]

On 05:14 PM 2/7/01 Joshua Stuart Rose wrote:
>As another chapter in the ongoing National Audubon Society saga,
>apparently NAS has cancelled several listservs without warning or
>explanation, including a Mexican birding listserv and a couple of 
>Texas-
>based lists. This news was posted on CarolinaLeps by a friend of mine
>from Texas. The Virginia birding list, which I think is also run by 
>NAS,
>is still up and running for now...

Apparently the deal with Audubon and listservs is that the ISP they are 
using to host their stuff is charging $300/year for hosting each list 
and those lists that someone didn't up and pay Audubon for quickly got 
cancelled without warning but not totally without explanation. It seems 
to me that Audubon is being overcharged for the lists, especially since 
they were all down for a while recently, but maybe that is the going 
rate.

Apart from that, I'd like to thank everybody who sent suggestions for 
my little trip to North Carolina a couple of weeks ago. The way things 
turned out, I didn't end up with nearly as much time for birding as I 
thought, so I just went down to Charlotte and did some birding there 
with Eric Harrold who was very helpful and showed me around to various 
local spots. We saw a bunch of ducks, some hawks, a single pipit, some 
snipe and several Least Sandpipers, which surprised me a little. I'm 
not used to seeing them in winter. Are they normal for that area at the 
end of January? On the way back to Salisbury to pick up my sister, I 
stopped at a highway rest stop where I heard some trilling-type noises 
in a tree - like juncos or Chipping Sparrows or Pine Warblers all make. 
I ended up seeing all three species in the pine trees there and never 
did decide which one I was hearing. I think it was the sparrows. I also 
heard a squeeky bird that might have been a Brown-headed Nuthatch, but 
I saw the little bird fly away, across the hgihway just as I was 
getting close enough to try to find it. That would have been something 
I don't ever see at home. Oh well. The one that gets away is always the 
most interesting bird of the day, it seems.

--
Katrina Knight
kknight@epix.net
Reading, PA