[Birdtalk] Rare Bird reports

[birderb at aol.com]

   Greetings:
 
 It has been an interesting discussion on how to best submit rare sightings to record committees. Many have weighed in on the discussion. Below is the message that David Sibley just sent. He refers to Louis Bevier who is a birding scholar. Louis writes abstracts for the Natural History Museum. I have enjoyed birding with Louis on the Texas south coast. Although, Louis is a recognized expert, I was impressed by his detail in taking field notes and making sketches of the birds that we saw. Our sighting of a rare Yellow-cheeked Warbler was accepted by the Texas Rare Bird Committee, as the second sighting ever of this rare bird. His field notes and sketch made this possible, along with our written account.
 
 Regards,
 
 Bill Fenimore
 
 Here is David’s opinion:
  This may be only indirectly ID-related, but I’d like to express some strong feelings about this topic. First, I agree with Louis Bevier’s points, and I agree whole-heartedly with those who have emphasized the value of field notes and sketches, and Alvaro’s well-taken point that there are two separate benefits of this – the product (documentation of the sighting) and the process (increased depth of observation). I also agree that sight records are fundamental to birding, but I disagree with several of the premises put forth by Rick Wright and Matt Sharp, especially that written documentation is on par with photos as evidence.    Rick Wright in his editorial in Winging It suggests that something has changed recently in the way we value sight records - digital photos are replacing written descriptions and sending us back to the “shotgun” days when sight records were not accepted, only physical proof such as a specimen. But this misses the point that sight records of common species have always been the foundation of bird distribution information. Even Audubon and his predecessors identified birds by sight and understood which species were common and rare without shooting every single one. They preferred to shoot the rare ones. And for the last several hundred years any claim of an unexpected species had to be backed up by physical evidence, the standard in any field of science and in court (thankfully we now have digital cameras and there is no need to collect rare birds). Digital cameras have not led to any new standards for sight records.   Sight records have been, and will continue to be, the fundamental data on which much of the information in state bird books, breeding bird atlases, county checklists, etc are based. This does not mean that a sight record is a proven occurrence, and *most importantly* questioning particularly extraordinary sight records should not be taken as an indictment of the value of sight records in general.    There is an inherent difference between a sighting and a photo. A sight record is always an individual experience. It’s nice to be able to read someone's description or see their sketch, but there is no way to actually repeat the experience. Furthermore, a description or sketch, no matter how careful and detailed, shows us only what the observer filtered through their own biases and abilities to record on paper. We each read it and respond in our own way; but we only experience the story that the original observer is telling.    A longer and more detailed observation is more likely to be correct, and to the extent that note-taking and sketching causes us to look longer and more closely it can increase accuracy, but any sighting can be wrong, no matter how well-described, and no matter how experienced the observer (ask anyone). It’s fine to accept sightings of expected birds, but the more unexpected the sighting, the more evidence is needed to support it. The same evidence - say a well-described Golden-crowned Sparrow – might be accepted without much question in Massachusetts in January (where there is some precedent), but not in southern Florida in July (which really needed a photo).   The value of any recorded image - still or video - is that it provides a verifiable record of the observation. Verifiable in the sense that anyone can review it, analyse it, and come to independent conclusions based on objective data. The recorded images may be ambiguous, and they can still be interpreted with bias, but we can all study and analyse them independently and repeatedly. Obviously better quality images are less likely to be ambiguous, less subject to biased interpretations, and more likely to be identifiable.    Sight records are exciting. If your neighbor says he saw a little red bird with dark wings, sitting on the fence in his backyard off and on for an hour and wagging its tail, that's exciting. You might even be convinced that it was a Vermilion Flycatcher. If you are birding at a local pond and a small red bird with a dark tail flits across the road and sits momentarily at the top of a willow, that's exciting too. You might be convinced you've seen a vermilion flycatcher. But what you really have is a hypothesis, a hunch. In the same way that a detective follows leads and hunches in an investigation, possible sightings can guide us to more confident sightings and eventually to confirmation (we try to track the bird down for a better look), but they are not confirmation on their own just as a hunch is not evidence in court.   The reason the debate over recent Ivory-billed Woodpecker evidence has centered on the video is because science demands independently verifiable evidence for proof, and so far only the video can provide that. Everyone wants better evidence, and the painstaking and nitpicking analysis of the video might seem pointless to some, but that video alone has been held up as PROOF. So this is a debate about what is real and what is not, and it is important and scientific at its core.   The ivory-billed sightings have not been ignored. They could be correct. They do constitute evidence and investigators have used the sightings to direct monumental search efforts. Those searches could have led to more sightings, lengthy repeat observations, and high-quality documentation. So far it’s been a dead-end, but the search continues.   Sight records are exciting and are fundamentally important to bird study. Written descriptions and sketches have value for the observer and for posterity. Both should continue to be encouraged as central to the hobby and the science of bird study. But we must accept that sightings will always be subject to some error, slightly less than proof, and that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”. This has been the standard for hundreds of years.   David Sibley Concord, MA   Bill Fenimore
 Utah Audubon Policy Advocate
 1860 North 1000 West
 Layton, UT 84041-1858
 801-525-8400 Work
 801-525-8415 Fax
 801-699-9330 Cellular
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
    
 
 
    
  
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