Alicia (& all), I believe without question that all kinds of wild bird reports should be posted on Cayugabirds-L, not just rarities or first-of-year reports, and I hope my own various postings have demonstrated an appreciation for many aspects of birding. With regard to the Sanderling and Orange-crowned Warbler on Saturday, I think they should have been reported to Cayugabirds-L, and to the extent. that those reports were late or incomplete I think that all of us who saw the birds or knew about them and subscribe to Cayugabirds-L share some responsibility. I did not intend to suggest in my post that the fact that neither species was extremely rare and both species had already been reported this year was a reason for not reporting them to Cayugabirds-L.
The part which Alicia cut out of my post refered to a different system, not Cayugabirds-L, by which birders can send a text message about rare birds to subscribers of that rare bird alert (RBA) who can then receive that message immediately on their cell phone while they are out birding or anywhere else, rather than waiting until everyone has come home tired after birding and then written and posted their own reports and read everyone else's reports on Cayugabirds-L, and it's gotten dark, and the rare bird may have left, and others chances of refinding it are greatly reduced. My question was whether the Sanderling and Orange-crowned Warbler were unusual enough to go into that system, whose rules I did not make, but specifically speak of birds which are out of season or out of range and specifically exclude simple first-of-year reports of expected birds. If the above birds (and the Cackling Geese, and the American Golden-Plovers) don't qualify, maybe a new text-message service should be started for birders who have time and texting to spend on finding out such things without bothering the busy people on the RBA who only want to hear about the real rarities. Perhaps these messages can also be sent to Cayugabirds-L? Another option might be to receive all Cayugabirds-L posts as text messages, but this has its drawbacks as these posts can be numerous, long, and diverse with the bits of unusual-bird-info hidden so they don't even show up in text messages. I'm sorry if this is or was confusing. Perhaps I shouldn't be bothering the whole Cayugabirds-L with such arcane stuff, but I wanted to be clear. As to first of year records (and first of season records), I think there is value beyond the fun, and there are reasons other than competitiveness to associate a name with a report. A first of year report gives people a sense of what time of year a species shows up, and can allow people to be more alert for that species. A person's name with that report may allow others to contact that person, which can help in learning such things as how they identified the bird, how they found the bird, and what sort of places they were birding, and specific directions. That's certainly how I use those contacts! By the way, the tradition of keeping track of first of year records and publicly crediting them to specific observers at specific locations goes back decades at the Lab of O. What I wrote is below. --Dave Nutter "Some neat birds were found Saturday that didn't get posted on Cayugabirds-L or texted to the rare bird alert but did get shared by cell phone among several people in the field. There was a Sanderling which Bob McGuire & Gary Kohlenberg (& Stuart Krasnoff?) found at Myers Point early this morning, and was later seen by at least Ann Mitchell and myself. And there was an Orange-crowned Warbler which Nate Senner found at Freese Road which was later seen by Gary Kohlenberg and Ann Mitchell. Neither was a first of year observation nor a bird which is unexpected, but both are tough basin birds which few people have seen this year. Should such observations be put on the RBA? Should observers ensure that such observations get posted on Cayugabirds-L?" On Sunday, October 18, 2009, at 10:07AM, "Alicia Plotkin" <[email protected]> wrote: > -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
