Posted by Joel Rosenthal on January 01, 1970 at 00:00:00
Steve--The "flycatcher delusion" is a well known phenomenon to psychologists, and is well documented in the scientific literature. It is a sister event to other similar mass hysterias, the last newsworthy local event I can recall being the loggerhead kingbird hysteria of 2007.Of course, following your train thought, you could probably include some of the following calculations: average birder age : 65 likelihood of death, injury or accident from any cause for any of the 300 birders during any 2 day period: 1 -2% (random guess--might be higher??) funeral and body transport costs, hospital and doctor costs--???? psychological counseling for birders who dipped on the bird--$250 /hr(none so far, I guess, but others will likely straggle in too late for a look). cost of souvenir t shirts and certificates of participation-???? see my 2007 post about similar aspects of the kingbird phenomenon : http://bird-board-archives.s3-website-us-east1.amazonaws.com/messages/14750.html So you raise a good point, but as you can see the financial consequences go far beyond the items you've enumerated. As for me, I didn't go to see either bird...I am waiting for an ivory billed woodpecker event here, like they had elsewhere a few years ago.....