It is a pity that the well-deserved accolades being heaped on John Young for his Night Parrot discovery are tempered by the sort of reference we see here from Geoff.
For the record, there were sound reasons for raising serious doubts about some of John’s previous pronouncements, most notably his claim to have discovered a new species of fig-parrot. I won’t go over old ground but those reasons are detailed here: http://tinyurl.com/nzytmlu. I invite anyone with a dispassionate interest in that affair to carefully consider the facts. I raise this matter now only because Geoff, Lloyd and others have done so in a derogatory way.
It is not a case of “eating humble pie”. I and other critics have always admired John’s considerable expertise in the field and I made that point at the time. John Young is a bushman and birder par excellence and that has never been in doubt in my view. What was always a puzzle to many of us was why some of these ploys of times past ever came into play.
I have no doubts about his current Night Parrot record and congratulate him warmly on his exciting discovery. But be assured that the circumstances surrounding this discovery are a world away from other matters I have referred to.
Message: 11
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 10:22:42 +1000
From: “Geoff Jones”
To:
Subject: [Birding-Aus] Night Parrot
Message-ID: <000f01ce745e$c6dd41e0$5497c5a0$@bigpond.net.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”us-ascii”
Congratulations to John Young Maybe a lot of his detractors will grovel and
eat humble pie now !
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
