Hi all,
A few words before we've exhausted ourselves on this topic.
Something we haven't really discussed is that every now and then, we
don't identify birds correctly. Take the Long-billed Dowitcher from
a couple of years back, caught, measured, photographed etc, and
identified as a Long-billed. Only once the rarities committee had
assessed the report and got expert comment from outside, did it
become clear that the bird was in fact Short-billed. Regardless of
whether or not this matters to you, it does matter to ornithological
reporting bodies.
I know it can be a bit of a slap in the face to have to write a
report on a bird you know well, and then have someone else
tell you you may be wrong, but if we submit records to a rarities
committee we should accept that a certain level of documentation may
be necessary for "validation" of your record. We would expect the
same if a foreign birder came to our local patch and reported some
outrageous crippler.
>From what I've seen of the BARC rarities committee's website, the
reasons behind a record not being accepted are laid out very clearly,
and this includes recognising that in all likelihood you were
correct, but the committee just cannot be sure. That's fine with me.
I would rather have this than records becoming accepted as truth
simply through having been talked about a lot.
As a New Zealander, I would love to see the rarities committee there
work as well as the Australian one does here. Instead, we have a
good recording scheme (Classified Summarised Notes) that is
frequently filled with sightings of great birds with little or
nothing to back them up. There are many historical records which
could do with more back-up to confirm an ID, and some which might be
able to be resolved if there was a decent file on them. We have had
yellow-legged stints in NZ in the past which are thought to be likely
to be Least. I would love to see a decent report on them assessed
now, 30 years on, by a bunch of folk who really know what they are on
about.
So my 2-cents' worth (I guess that should be 5-cents' worth by now)?
Rarities committees are a necessary evil, but they have really valid
roles to play - not only as a check on identifications, but also as a
record repository, including of all those "not-quite" sightings of
seabirds.
Cheers, Phil.
Phil Battley,
Australian School of Environmental Studies,
Griffith University,
Nathan,
Queensland 4111,
Australia.
Ph: 0061-7-3875-7474
Fax:0061-7-3875-7459
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