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<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">Hi all,</p>
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<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">Sorry for the length of this post. </p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">Today I talked to a resident of one of the houses impacted
by the Bluetail stakeout and I’d like to pass on his displeasure in the role of
his advocate.</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">But first I want to salute everyone who took part in the Great-Miserable-Lake-Forest-Park-Bluetail
Stakeout over the last several days.</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">Every time we go stand somewhere in the public domain and
let our love for the Earth’s precious Creatures be known, we are doing a
celestially-important and good and wonderful thing. <span> </span>We must never feel guilty about birding and never
feel guilty about traveling to go birding. I would argue that we must ignore
the carbon-counters who would have us stop driving to see (and thus proclaim to
the world our love of) birds.</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">(Not that I am not in terror over climate change. But we
just installed a heat pump. We did not do this out of guilt or shame but thrill
over the improvements it would bring to our lives. This is a crucial
difference.)</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">Economists struggled for over a century to understand why
water and air, and other things we need to survive, are less valuable to us
than gold, which only has a few actual uses in our lives. Eventually the
concept of marginal utility was discovered: What is the value of one more unit
above and beyond the ones you already have?</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">The value of one-more-unit of Red-flanked Bluetail might not
seem that great if you bird regularly East of the Ural Mountains, but in
Washington it is through-the-roof and we made that known in these last few days.
Many of us were very disappointed to walk away “empty-handed.” </p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">Although we dipped, Delia and I got to see our FOY Band-tails
and hear Varied Thrush sing. We met the discoverer of the Bluetail, Nancy, who
left us in awe. She knows how to get Madronas to grow in her yard like weeds
and was the founder of an organization that promoted organic gardening, back in
the day when this wasn’t the no-brainer it is today, thanks in no small part to
her. Oh, and she’s really nice!</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">We met many wonderful neighbors. One woman and her daughter
stopped their car at the stakeout and I immediately began apologizing for the
disruption to the neighborhood when they interrupted me to insist upon leaving 9
cartons of Girl Scout Cookies to thank us because they were so happy and grateful
to us because we were celebrating this wonderful bird in their neighborhood. There were many neighbors who struck this tone.</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">We also got to talk to a few of our birder friends and meet
more, friendships we value highly with people we mostly only see at stakeouts.</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">But I also talked to a resident who wasn’t at all happy and was
wanting to know when the end-game was.<span> </span>Because
I was attempting to represent us all (which I don’t) I tried to promise him
what I could, which was not much. But I am asking everyone to be perfect empathists,
to see it all from his point of view as well as ours.</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">Delia and I have been hosts to a stakeout, the 2019 Beacon
Hill TEWA stakeout, which was similar in two ways to this: It was cold, and many
people went away empty-handed.</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">When you are a participant, you don’t realize that a host,
regardless of whether they are an avid birder or not, wants you to see the bird
and may feel worse than you do when you don’t. We suffered on the days when people
didn’t see the little Tennessee Warbler, and second-guess some of our own actions to this day. </p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">We are birders and this is the kind of thing we live for,
but we did in some way experience the sense of something coming in and taking
over our lives and preventing us from going about our business and--we didn't feel this in our case, but we could see how we could feel our privacy is being stolen.</p>
<div>It was all pleasant for us, but had we not
been birders, or people who weren’t already predisposed in birding’s favor, we
could see how it could easily have been an incredible annoyance. </div>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">This is a recurring problem. I’ve tossed over in my head
many times if there could be a simple way something could be done to ameliorate
it. I’ve considered the idea of trying to collect money from the participants, but it never
seems like it could work and not backfire in some way. If there were a moderately
expensive gift that would with certainty be appreciated, that might be perfect.
But gifts fail a majority of the time anyway. One person’s wonderful bottle of
expensive wine is another person’s insinuation that they are an alcoholic.
There is no gift that I can think of that would work for everyone.</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">The only thing I think we can all do is never, never, be
partisans on our own side. We have an ace, that this is a public street, but we
should never play that ace. A Northern Hawk Owl died in Havilah as a direct
result of a stakeout, and a Caracara in Darrington may have also died from stakeout-fatigue, I don’t
believe anyone but the landowner knows. Playing our ace in either situation
would have only hastened these bird's tragic deaths.</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">So in lieu of any good ideas, I just want to put in my plea
to everyone to mentally “take the side” of the people in the houses and
neighborhoods that we descend on, for their sake, our sake and the bird’s sake. I know most people already do but I feel I
must make this public plea as something I owe this neighbor and anyone else whose
life I impacted the last two days. (As we first tried to park, another neighbor
registered their extreme displeasure also.)</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">With that said, it was wonderful to see you all yesterday
and today at the Great Miserable, and good luck to anyone who tries tomorrow while sending as many good vibes as possible to a wonderful--and in some cases, suffering-- nieghborhood!!!</p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="ydpad747408MsoNormal">-Ed Newbold <a href="mailto:ednewbold1@yahoo.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ednewbold1@yahoo.com</a>
Beacon Hill, Seattle</p></div><br></div></div></body></html>