Do tell.
Then why didn’t you just say that? And there’s no need for the snarling as you add the reference that you carelessly neglected to include. But then, snarling is your Pavlovian response to all my posts.
And Paul King accuses me of expressing negative emotion here!
So what? My statement is still correct. He is currently a very minor player. He has published nothing important in years.
The two that you mentioned are minor players, today, however important they were in the past. You forget that I have read virtually all the publications. I know who is currently making significant contributions and who isn’t.
I stand corrected. But that makes the statement on the ID main article even more unforgivable, for reasons I’ve already given. The ID-is-creationism claim would be plausible if placed in the “ID movement” article, but it’s a bald-faced lie when it refers to ID theory.
Duuuuhh… the two things are not logically incompatible. It apparently has not registered on your brain that not everyone in an organization chooses to participate in group e-mail conversations. This is particularly the case with older gentlemen.
As I expected would be the case, based on the 1989 and 1993 published editions, though I don’t have a copy of the 1987 draft. Surprising of you to admit error; I’ll look in the sky tonight for a blue moon.
No, that does not follow. “Believing that the world was created” is not identical with the belief normally called “creationism,” as I showed in detail in my long article on creationism, posted on this site. However, I’ll grant you that the authors of Pandas probably were “creationists” in the sense that you mean. But as I’ve already explained, it makes no difference. The only formal definition of ID that is unambiguously stated to be a definition is found in the Glossary of the 1993 published version, and it makes no mention of “abrupt appearances” and certainly no mention of the Bible, and it’s conceptually independent of any revealed religion. And it’s that type of definition that ID employs now. Kenyon and Davis’s Pandas book is about as representative of current ID as the Commodore Vic-20 is of today’s personal computers. You can see the family resemblance, but no one could confuse the two or fail to see significant differences. Unless, of course, they were trying to mislead the public with a false equals sign, as Wikipedia does, in its “appallingly biased” (Sanger) article.
No; I would follow your statement with a summary of the arguments used by that majority, and would conclude with something like: “In light of all this evidence pointing in the same direction, it seems unlikely that the idea of a flat earth can be revived.” Notice the dignified, scholarly, “encyclopedic” tone and phrasing of my final proposed sentence, as opposed to the aggressive, punch-in-the-face, culture-war flavor of the way Wikipedia frames things in its articles on origins.
If all you had to go on was that little caption, you’d be right, but as I pointed out (did you not see it?), you had in addition many specific statements by me about my field of study.
Have you taken the time to look at the publications? Have you ever read even a single article from BioComplexity, for example?
Funny how the nasty things you claim to see in my posts, you are completely blind to in the posts of the atheists and materialists here. Quite the double standard. But then, you’re probably one of the atheists and materialists, so that makes sense.
You speak as a Christian yourself? If so, could you specify some of the contents of your notion of Christianity?
I never said it should. But it should accurately distinguish ID from creationism. If it doesn’t, then the writers of its articles are so ignorant of the meaning of words that they have no business writing an encyclopedia.
I am tolerant of disagreement, but not when it comes from people who are (quoting the founder of Wikipedia) “appallingly biased”. In my real life (this place being at best surreal), I converse with philosophers, theologians, historians of ideas, political theorists, etc. all the time, and we have civilized debates in which there is give and take and both sides learn from the discussion. But no one here, at least on the atheist side, is interested in learning anything. Not one atheist here has moved even a millimeter, as far as I can see, toward more respect for Christianity and the Bible over the three or four years I’ve been reading the posts here.
I note that you did not answer my peacefully phrased request for background information on your academic field and/or profession. Is there some reason for that?
Thanks for the reference here, even though it was addressed to someone else.
Three points:
1-- The old hardcover Britannica was a traditional encyclopedia, the one that set the bar for all others. It was edited and written entirely by experts. I see that this online Britannica is crowd-written, with different people jumping in and making edits. Not a good idea, unless every one of those people making the edits has to be cleared beforehand based on academic qualifications in the area.
2-- The article is not as bad as the Wikipedia one. I am pleased to see the nuanced statement, “Intelligent design was widely perceived as being allied with scientific creationism,” as opposed to “ID is creationism” or “ID is a form of creationism” – the error perpetuated by Wikipedia.
3-- The article still contains errors. For example:
“From this premise, they inferred that no such system could have come about through the gradual alteration of functioning precursor systems by means of random mutation and natural selection, as the standard evolutionary account maintains; instead, living organisms must have been created all at once by an intelligent designer.”
The last clause is not a required position in ID, as Behe’s testimony at Dover shows, and as many other statements of ID leaders show. The writers here have not done their homework.
I thought it would have been obvious from the context which you omitted[1], the known history of Pandas, and your familiarity with the Kitzmiller testimony.
But perhaps it wasn’t. I’ll downgrade my assessment of your intelligence and memory in future.
If you’d even glanced at the Wikipedia page before commenting, you wouldn’t have to.
Who said anything about “the world”? The definition is about life:
Creation means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.
That was in one of the posts you were replying to, so you have no excuse for getting it wrong.
Oh, you’re going to grant that they were probably creationists, are you? Even though one of them taught creationism for years, was an expert witness for the creationist side in both the Maclean and Edwards cases,[2] and signed an affidavit (which was used as an exhibit in Kitzmiller) that “I believe that a scientifically sound creationist view of origins is not only possible, but is to be preferred over the evolutionary view”.
It’s time you stopped ‘granting’ ‘probabilities’ and started acknowledging facts.
And no-one would say that today’s laptops are not a form of computer.
The people who invented the term “intelligent design” (in its modern form) defined it in the first published edition of OPaP ↩︎
To assuage your failing memory of matters you claim expertise on, that’s Maclean v Arkansas and Edwards v Aguillard. ↩︎
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So the authors of Pandas were certainly creationists. Fine. As I said, that makes no difference to my main point.
It does not follow from
“The authors who introduced the term ‘intelligent design’ were creationists”
that
“All subsequent users of the term ‘intelligent design’ were/are creationists.”
However, it does follow from numerous definitions and explanations posted on Discovery that ID, per se, is not creationism.
Those statements agree with the explicit distinction Behe made at the time of the Dover trial.
They also agree with the words of Bill Dembski:
"First off, intelligent design is not a form of anti-evolutionism. Intelligent design does not, as Eugenie Scott falsely asserts, claim that living things came together suddenly in their present form through the efforts of a supernatural creator. Intelligent design is not and never will be a doctrine of creation. A doctrine of creation presupposes not only a designer that in some manner is responsible for organizing the structure of the universe and its various parts, but also a creator who is the source of being of the universe. A doctrine of creation thus invariably entails metaphysical and theological claims about a creator and the creation. Intelligent design, on the other hand, merely concerns itself with features of natural objects that reliably signal the action of an intelligence, whatever that intelligence might be.
“More significantly for the educational curriculum, however, is that intelligent design has no stake in living things coming together suddenly in their present form. To be sure, intelligent design leaves that as a possibility. But intelligent design is also fully compatible with large-scale evolution over the course of natural history, all the way up to what biologists refer to as “common descent” (i.e., the full genealogical interconnectedness of all organisms). If our best science tells us that living things came together gradually over a long evolutionary history and that all living things are related by common descent, then so be it. Intelligent design can live with this result and indeed live with it cheerfully.”
Q.E.D.
I have certainly read some ID publications, though not recently. If you know of any that indicate a positive research program, perhaps you will point them out. Though judging by your silence on the question of whether ID has a theory, I rather doubt it. Though, having looked I note that for the current year they have but one article so far, itself questioning common ancestry. Last year has only a three part article on “the” bacterial flagellum and again seems to focus more on denying evolution than contributing to a positive research program.
The funny thing is that for all their faults none of them are as bad as you. And indeed, this paragraph is a demonstration of what I mean.
I speak as someone who was raised Christian. And indeed I was taught that humility and honesty were marks of a Christian. Certainly the Christians I knew and know from there were generally good and decent people.
Interesting that you keep going back to that point rather than the one we were discussing. To clarify, if it were genuinely the case that ID was creationism - and the DI denied it - would it be wrong of Wikipedia to say so? I don’t think so, but I get the impression that you disagree.
Given that you are inclined to assume the worst of anyone who takes a view that you dislike while bending over backwards to defend those who say things you do like this is really not very convincing.
Especially as “respect for the Bible” is one of those phrases that doesn’t seem to mean what it says (and I’d be pleasantly surprised if it did in this case).
Since I don’t claim any special expertise I don’t see that it is relevant.
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Obviously. I use the term “intelligent design”, and I’m not a creationist.
Of course. Any conclusion can be reached from false premises. Basic logic.
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If you can find anywhere where they have disowned this document I would love to see it.
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I’ve seen them defend it, but not disown it. It of course was not intended for public release, so more accurately states the organization’s malign intent than the organization’s various public statements would; I don’t think anyone would be justified in believing DI’s disclaimers even if such disclaimers existed. It’s likely that additional documents of an even worse nature exist, but are not publicly available.
But, of course, one can always take the stance that an organization can be judged only by its own carefully worded public-facing statements, in which case the various Mafia families are clearly law-abiding citizens, the tobacco lobby truly believed that smoking didn’t cause cancer, and Nixon was not a crook.
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No, in that case it would not be wrong. But the premise is counterfactual.
Yet you hold an adamant opinion regarding what counts as science and what doesn’t. I would think that you would not hold so firm a view unless you had advanced training in either one of the sciences or the history or philosophy of science. That’s why I was asking, to discover the basis of your adamantine certainty.
So was I. But on the other hand, Christians are not required to be doormats and let personally aggressive atheists and materialists walk all over them.
How about the one who wrote:
According to what you were taught, would the above remarks be “Christian” in character?
And there have been several more like that addressed to me on this site, some of were later grayed out when readers (not I) flagged them for inappropriateness. Guess which religious persuasion the people who posted them came from? (a) Christian; (b) Hindu; (c) Taoist; (d) materialist/atheist.
And also, guess the religious persuasion of the person who gave the above comment a “Like.”
Your oblique answer regarding your religion could be taken to mean that you are no longer Christian. If that’s so, what caused you to walk away? And what was the denomination?
Horrors, I’ve had my collar fingered by the Thought Police! 
If I may be permitted the right of reply, may I submit this data point:
The OED defines “twit” in this context as “A fool; a stupid or ineffectual person. slang.”
This is especially amusing as Dr Smith (before even completing her PhD) was able to prove Michael Behe (who Eddie was attempting to defend) foolish, stupid or ineffectual on the subject of virology. I would further note that this seems to be a trend, and it is hard to think of a biological field that Behe hasn’t proven himself to be foolish, stupid or ineffectual on. On this very forum it was demonstrated that he was foolish, stupid or ineffectual on the issue of good judicial practice, and at his cross-examination at Dover, his infamous Astrology admission proved him to be foolish, stupid or ineffectual on the Philosophy of Science.
I will leave readers to decide for themselves who the real “twit” here is.
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That would be in agreement with my view that accuracy is what counts.
Really? Surely there are obvious cases which any reasonably informed person can judge. And if I were wrong then surely you can come up with a rebuttal better than an appeal to credentialism. Isn’t the lack of a positive research program a severe lack if ID claims to be science?
There is no danger of that. The issue is your tendency to try to walk all over others.
I don’t claim that they are. But they are hardly as bad as your output. Nor do I think that people who are not claiming to defend Christianity should be expected to act in a Christian way. Unlike those who do,
The reason I walked away is that I didn’t believe, despite attending Sunday School and the Youth Group. I also read the Bible from cover to cover - but that contributed to my unbelief. I don’t believe that the denomination is important.
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Let me make sure I understand you. Are you saying that in forums where Christians and non-Christians meet, it’s OK if non-Christians are vulgar, downright rude, and insulting, because they don’t know any better, but if Christians bristle even a little bit when personally attacked, or when decent Christian writers they know are personally attacked, that’s not OK because Christians are supposed to act better? That recipe just hands the emotional and rhetorical upper hand in the forum over to the non-Christians.
Or are you saying that both Christians and non-Christians should be chastised any time they argue aggressively in a forum like this? If that’s your position, I will keep my eye out and watch for your rebukes to others, and see if they are spread out in a balanced way among all “offenders.”
I’d like to show you an example of my response to civilized disagreement, from this thread. T. aquaticus, one of the few people who even tried to deal at any length with the actual subject I posted, made some critical remarks about the writer of the piece I posted, but also gave a lengthy analysis of the issues. He wrote politely and constructively. How did I respond to him? Did I lash out because he made a few negative remarks about Turner’s writing? Did I rush to Turner’s defense and call aquaticus names? No, here is what I wrote:
Was that reply “arrogant”? Did that reply show “hate”?
In addition to that reply to a “friendly atheist,” I would suggest you look at some of my exchanges here with Christians, e.g., with Daniel Ang, for example, or Michelle, or Allen Miller, or Ron Sewell. You’ll see in those conversations a mood of respectful give and take, as opposed to a mood of showdown.
If I were the source of all discord here, you would see the same discord in my conversations with those people. But you won’t. So it’s just possible that some others here have a share in generating the sort of frictional replies you seem to dislike.
The denomination might not in itself provide the information I was looking for. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. But I have found, from 50-60 years of interaction with Christians of all types, that often people who come from very narrow, literalist churches react against that, and throw the baby out with the bathwater, rejecting all of Christianity instead of seeking a different, less narrow form of Christianity. So I was wondering if that was your situation.
I am certainly suggesting that Christians should behave better than non-Christians, since that’s what Christianity teaches. And especially so when claiming to defend Christianity, The rest of it is a gross distortion. Which doesn’t even mention the condescension, or that the supposed reaction can be worse than the alleged provocation. And your choice of post to object to suggests that you do not allow your opponents the luxury of “bristling” in response to your assaults.
That there are exceptions hardly justifies your excesses. And even if others partly contribute a disproportionate response is hardly a good thing. (I note that Aquaticus did not comment on climate change which seems to be a “hot button” issue for you - a fact that calls into question any idea that your nastiness is in defence of Christianity).
Absolutely not.
Please direct this criticism also to Puck, Faizal Ali, Roy, and many the others here who have steadily and consistently assumed the worst about me, and also about the motives of the Discovery Institute, and not just of the Institute itself, but of its members as individuals. (Just on this one page we have Puck telling us, by implication, that Discovery’s explicit policy statements are big lies covering up a dark agenda.)
But by the way, your characterization of me is false. When I’m first getting to know a person, I always give that person the benefit of the doubt. I try to imagine the best possible motive rather than the worst. This is partly because I think it’s the Christian thing to do, but it’s also just part of my basic personality; I want to believe that people aren’t really bad, but just misunderstood. But if after repeated dealing with a person, I find that only lower motives can explain the person’s words or actions, then I am forced to that conclusion.
As for whether or not ID is “science,” I think that concern is over-rated both by ID people and by their detractors. As a philosopher, I’m concerned only with the question whether ID is true, i.e., whether there is or is not intelligent design in nature. And I don’t really care whether that answer is established by science or philosophy or something else. But I do care when people misrepresent ID (the theoretical position, not the movement) as creationism, because creationism asserts that there is design in nature based wholly on faith, whereas in ID (as a theoretical position, again), faith plays no role.
That’s why there is not a single argument for design in No Free Lunch or Darwin’s Black Box or Nature’s Destiny that depends on the assumption that the Bible is true or that God exists etc. (And whether those arguments are good arguments or bad ones has nothing to do with the point I’m making, which is that they aren’t religious or theological arguments.) ID as a theoretical exercise is not creationism, and can’t be creationism, because it bars itself from input from revealed religion. So if you want to say it’s not science, but philosophy, I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. (But of course philosophy can make use of facts about nature uncovered by science, and draw inferences from them.) But if you say it’s creationism, you’ll have a fight on your hands, because that’s not true.
The DI has overtly worked with Christian churches throughout its history. It’s not a secret.
So if Ken Ham says that his claims of a young Earth, a recent global flood, and separately created species are not based on faith then Ken Ham is not a creationist? Really?
So as long as Ken Ham doesn’t mention that he gets his idea of a young Earth and global flood from the Bible then he’s not a creationist?
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I’ve conceded many times that ID as a cultural movement is religiously motivated. But the arguments for design in nature don’t make use of any religious premise or axiom, so ID as a theory (or whatever you want to call it if you don’t like that word) is separable from religion. Again, no one has met my challenge to find any point in any argument for design in any of the major ID works where the argument brings in a religious premise.
The Discovery Institute is home to both the theory of ID and the culture movement surrounding ID, so it’s not surprising that people tend to conflate them. But philosophers, historians of ideas, etc. can easily separate the two strands. Even some Discovery Fellows separate them. Michael Denton, from what I’m told, couldn’t care less about restoring America to Christian or theistic convictions. He just wants to talk about how nature seems exquisitely fine-tuned to produce life and man.
You are speaking hypothetically, right? You aren’t claiming he is now saying that?
The answer is that if he ever said that, no one would believe him, because we know the history of creationism from the 1800s on and we have hundreds of books, tracts, treatises, etc., some of the produced by Ham himself, that make it clear that within creationist culture (which in the context of Ham means Protestant Biblicist culture) the opposition to evolution is based on the Bible, understood as accurate history and accurate science. So if he ever said, “I’m arguing for design in nature and against evolution with no religious motivation,” he wouldn’t be credible.
On the other hand, we know that the tradition of arguing for design in nature existed long before the Bible, in the writings of pagan philosophers, and we know that it continued throughout Western lands all through the Christian era, making use of arguments which did not depend on Biblical premises, and which were understood to be knowable by people without faith in any revealed religion. We also know that the ID leaders are very familiar with this tradition, being very educated in Western history of ideas (Richards in philosophy and theology, Wells in theology, Dembski in theology, Nelson and Meyer in philosophy of science, Flannery in history of science and Victorian thought, Denton in structuralist biological thought of the 19th century, Sternberg in Platonic thought, etc.) So when ID people say they intend to argue for design in nature based only on the arrangements of nature, without depending on revelation, their project’s independence from Genesis etc. is credible.
Again, no one would believe him, because we have an unbroken literature trail going back a century and leading right up to trunk of Ken Ham’s automobile. And we have no case in the history of Western thought in which someone argued for the combination of young earth and global flood independent of Bible exegesis. But sure, if there were such a person, who actually calculated the earth to be 6,000 years old not on the basis of Genesis but on the basis of some natural phenomena, and who argued for a global flood based on features of the earth, and who, we had reason to believe, had never heard of or read the Bible, or had not heard of it until after he had formulated his scientific arguments, such a person would not be a creationist. If you ever find such a person, let me know. But it won’t be Ken Ham.
No, I’m not going to pretend that others are as bad as you. Your rant against the Wikipedia editors alone is a particular example.
If someone else is posting here using your name then I suggest you deal with that.
Yet the issue is one that you brought up. And there are obvious reasons why ID should want to present itself as science. Indeed, ID started by attempting to influence the science curriculum in schools.
The issue is not so simple. Of Pandas and People was an attempt to get thinly disguised creationism into schools. Many ID supporters are creationists and are motivated by their creationism. To say that ID is creationism goes too far. But it is not too far from the truth. Faith plays a major role, even for Behe, the lead8mg non-creationist in ID (and even he seems to have been a creationist).
But they may be in service to a religious agenda. Apologetic arguments do not have to explicitly invoke theological belief. I’ll except Denton, but it is rather clear that Dembski and Behe are arguing for religious belief even if they are not explicit about it.
Indeed I will ask you, is it your claim that all arguments made by creationists for creationism - or Young Earth creationists for a young Earth - must depend on the assumption that the Bible is true or that God exists? Because if that is not the case your distinction is clearly inadequate.
Indeed I would say that the assumption that the Designer is God underlies and influences a good deal of ID argument. The obsession with denying the existence of “Junk DNA”. The use of purely negative argumentation in The Design Inference. The refusal to characterise the Designer.
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I did not bring it up. I mentioned “ID is not good science” as a passing example of the sort of thing that a Wikipedia article might say. The remark was in the context of a discussion of the proper mode of writing for encyclopedias, and what I objected to about Wikipedia’s style of writing. I did not mention it to contest the question of whether or not ID is good science, or whether ID is science at all. But the moment I mentioned it, you started talking about ID not being science at all, about why ID hasn’t been generating more research, etc. So in my last post I responded to set the matter straight, i.e., that I have no intention of arguing with you or anyone else here about whether ID should count as science.
Whatever the earliest ID writers might have intended, Discovery has explicitly denounced any attempt to mandate the teaching of ID in schools. Repeatedly. Loudly. In articles that you could easily read (but apparently haven’t) if you made the effort to do, on their website. Since before the Dover trial. That’s more than 17 years ago. You’re living in the past. Your criticism is irrelevant to current reality.
Of course not. Creationists can and always have used arguments that do not make such assumptions. But what makes them creationists (aside from rejection of evolution) is that they insist on such assumptions – or, to be more precise (since merely believing that the Bible is true and that God exists are beliefs not specific to creationism), that they insist that Genesis is to be interpreted (more or less) literally-historically, that it’s (more or less) a news report on the order of events that produced the world, and that in any case where statements of Genesis appear to be in conflict with statements of current science, the Genesis statements overrule the conclusions of the scientists.
Thus, even the most wretched of the old batch of creationists, people like Gish and Morris, made use of arguments that came from outside of beliefs about a literal Genesis. When you’re trying to persuade people who are not of your camp, of course you will make use of any arguments, including purely secular arguments, that will help your case. I’ve seen Jehovah’s Witness tracts that make use of statistical arguments from non-creationist mathematicians about the improbability of a protein being formed by chance. Those arguments don’t depend on JW belief. They’re secular, scientific (or, if you insist, philosophical) arguments. They happen to pull in the same direction as JW religious beliefs based on faith in Genesis, but they aren’t faith-based arguments. There’s nothing new here. I don’t know what you’re trying to establish.
“Underlies and influences” is vague. My point is that belief that the Designer is God never influences the actual course of any ID argument. That the Designer is God is (a) a private belief of particular ID proponents and (b) a possible further inference (but not one made by using design-detection methods) once one has confirmed the existence of some sort of designer. You are welcome to take us through the pages of No Free Lunch or Darwin’s Black Box and show where any step in any of the arguments slips in “the designer is God” (either directly or slyly) as a necessary step in an argument for the existence of design. No one here has done it, since I posed this challenge a few years ago, found such a case, and one would think that the people here would have a very strong motive for finding such a case.
You are the great champion of “science” in this discussion, and one of the key aspects of science is empiricism – dealing with actual data. So produce some data from the texts that is supportive of your speculative hypothesis. Where are the passages where the argument for design slips in the premise that the designer is God? Not places where an ID proponent mentions that as a matter of personal belief he thinks the designer is God, but places where “the designer is God” is a necessary premise without which the argument cannot work.
You’ve provided no logical connection at all with criticisms of “junk DNA” and believing that the designer is God. Try again.
Again, you establish no logical connection. You’re listing points without articulating anything.
ID theory has no tools with which to characterize the designer, beyond something general such as, “whoever the designer was, he was pretty clever.” ID theory does not claim to be able to do anything other than detect design. Reflecting on the nature of designer belongs not to ID theory but to philosophy or theology. So no, “the designer is God” has no influence on the actual arguments offered.
You appear to be confusing the question of motive with the question of how ID proponents argue. It can be freely granted that the belief that the designer is God provides an underlying personal motive for most ID proponents as they think about God, nature, design, and so on. But it does not influence how they argue for design in the slightest.
Regarding the meaning of creationism, you seem to have a vague picture, judging from how you use the term in this discussion. I have a detailed study of the actual use of the term over the past century in popular discussions about origins, here:
The study is based on actual usage of the term, i.e., is empirically focused. And to ensure balance, it uses many examples from people whose positions I disagree with. I recommend that you read it. Knowing what I have in mind by “creationism” you might better understand some of my comments about the distinction between ID (as a theory, as distinct from a social movement) and creationism. You might even (gasp!) come to agree that on my understanding of creationism, it is indeed wrong to say that ID is creationism. I think you have already partly conceded this, but then with your left hand you have taken away what you gave with the right, by suggesting that the difference is so slight as not to be significant. Maybe after you read the article, you will grant that the difference is clearer than you have so far acknowledged. (By the way, the purpose for which I wrote the article was not to distinguish between ID and creationism, but it is clearly relevant to that distinction.)
I hope you find this current reply completely focused on the issues, and that it expresses no “hate” of anyone. 
Sure. But bear in mind my wife and I are pandemic birders, so our life list is not exactly voluminous at this point.
We were visiting the area around the Pinery Provincial Park near the southern tip of Lake Huron. On one trail we encountered an experienced birder who gave us a tip to visit a particular point on another trail where a pair of hooded warblers were nesting and would appear if you played their call on your phone. This is not my photo, by I’m posting it because it’s such a striking looking bird:
Some of our most productive forays turned out to be to the lagoons built for the local sewage treatment plants that were teeming with many varieties of sandpipers and plovers. While Great Blue Herons are common around us, it was quite a spectacle to see upwards of fifty of them collected in one spot.
Other notable sightings for us were the indigo bunting, the purple finch, a trio of sharp-shineed hawks and a stunning red headed woodpecker (again, not my image.):
All in all a very productive trip, especially considering we weren’t there primarily to see birds.