Dear all,

The response to the posting of the ERSG (Ethnoornithology Research &
Study Group) website has been fantastic. We now have 48 members, more
than 20 links and a few introductory messages. As has been noted
before it is a bit light on for content and contributions at the
moment - hopefully that will change soon with your contributions.

We are more than pleasantly surprised by the spread of members across
the world - as is fitting of such a diverse topic as indigenous bird
knowledge it is most pleasing to see that we have members from (in no
particular order) the United Kingdom, Colombia, India, South Africa,
Italy, Portugal, Australia, Belgium and a number of states in the USA.

Apart from welcoming you to this group this message has another
purpose - we need your material for the first edition of the ERSG
newsletter. As indicated previously, we want to produce this later
this month so we need contributions as soon as possible.

Can we suggest that your contributions could include any of the
following items relevant to ethnoornithology:

- news from your country, University, institution or yourself;
- a precis of your current or proposed project/s;
- information about upcoming or recent conferences;
- copies of articles, papers or items of interest;
- proposals, suggestions, criticisms or your thoughts on this or
closely related topics and;
- anything else relevant to this topic.

The sooner your contributions come in the better - I'm off to the
Society of Ethnobiology conference in Pennsylvania in early March,
then to France and then back for the Society for Applied Anthropology
conference in Vancouver in late March so we'd like your contributions
by the last week in February so that we can get it out before I leave.

Don't forget to pass this message or news about the ERSG site on to
interested friends and colleagues. Thanks again for joining the ERSG
group - that's the easy part - now we need you to help make it work!

Cheers to you all and enjoy.

Robert Gosford
ERSG Owner and Moderator
Australian National University
Canberra ACT Australia