Apologies to Dave and all: I did not understand that now there are two
parallel systems for reporting birds in the basin. I had thought the
texting Dave referred to in his message referred to messages being sent
to CayugaBirds from the field by him and others, which show up as
[email protected], and didn't realize that the 'RBA' is an entirely
different network. Also, by no means was I seeking to blame anyone for
failing to report particular birds - life intervenes! I just wanted to
encourage the report all birds, and mistakenly thought he was suggesting
that birds that weren't FOY might not be worthy of report to the list.
Hence my comment that I don't really care about FOY - that doesn't mean
others shouldn't care, only that there are other reasons for reporting
and for reading reports to CayugaBirds beyond FOY.
Glad we all are agreed that all kinds of birds are worth reporting to
CayugaBirds - FOY, LOY and those in between!
Best -
Alicia
Dave Nutter wrote:
> 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
>
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