Mark Clayton wrote:
Personally, I, and a lot of others birders in Canberra, would dearly love to see a Secretarybird in Canberra. I have actually seen them is a couple of countries in southern Africa but to get one in Australia ………… and it wouldn’t cost me more than a few dollars worth of petrol.
Mark
Yes I too would dearly love to see a Secretarybird in Canberra, but the emphasis was on the words: “rather” and “where it is supposed to be” in my quote “I have always thought I would rather see a Secretarybird on the plains of Africa, where it is supposed to be, than on the streets of Canberra”. As in appreciating an animal in its habitat. Or to be a little less silly in my analogy, if there were Secretarybirds in a zoo here, I would go to see them. And for what it is worth, the choice of Secretarybird in this analogy is entirely pun intended.
My whole raising this was mainly for humour (sorry if people take it seriously), secondly to get some idea about what the people, close to the people, who wish to do these twitchy things, think about it and lastly so that we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Oh, by the way, I think the Hoopoe out there would have been great to see. They are seriously funny looking birds and like nothing else and worth going to some effort to see (and I have seen two in China) and my father had them as a regular garden bird around his home (in Israel). I suppose my last point is to turn my comments around and acknowledge the birding dedication of people so keen to see this bird, when it appears to me to be so much like other gulls that they probably know well to be almost indistinguishable.
Philip
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