Dear Birding-Ausers,
There has been regular correspondence on Birding-Aus recently from people
who have claimed sightings of the Baer's Pochard originally sighted by Fred
Smith et al on Saturday the 3rd of April.
I think we need to exercise some caution in our claims. Baer's Pochard is
reasonably difficult to identify. It is quite similar to the much more
common Hardhead. I spent considerable time over last weekend looking for
Fred's bird, along with many others. I saw a small number of fine-looking
Hardheads but no Pochards. To my knowledge, neither did anyone else over
the weekend.
I heard several stories of people "seeing" the Pochard which have
perpetuated the myth that the Pochard is around regularly, but many are not
credible - for example, apparently some people have claimed the Pochard
because a similar looking duck was on the same rock as the bird Fred saw.
Several times now, I have turned up at Werribee to find people looking at a
duck on THE rock debating whether they had the Pochard - it has been a
Hardhead.
Some people have also taken pictures of their sighting. Along with several
others, I have reviewed some of the pictures of the "Pochard" taken by some
of the observers. To date, they have all been pictures of Hardheads.
There are still some pictures that haven't been available yet and they
might or might not be of a Pochard.
Since the 3rd, I am aware of only one other credible sighting of a bird
that might be the one Fred saw. Therefore, I believe we should exercise
caution in our claims. For a rare bird like Baer's Pochard, sightings
should be well documented and, hopefully, photographed. To date, the
documentation has been lacking in many claimed sightings and the
photographs have shown that our identification skills are somewhat lacking.
While it is very possible that some of the sightings have been of Fred's
bird, the standard of proof we are currently using has been very low.
So, if you intend to look for the Pochard, please be prepared to gather
good descriptions and photographs so that this sighting can be properly
submitted as Australia's first record of Baer's Pochard. At this stage, I
don't believe we have anywhere near enough evidence for the sightings to be
critically reviewed and accepted by the BARC (Birds Australia Rarities
Committee) process. If you already have good descriptions and / or
photographs that have not been sighted by others, please feel free to
contact me or one of the other birders who are taking a direct interest in
documenting this bird (like Mike Carter or Rohan Clarke).
Regards
Chris
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