So, what ARE the standards that the record committee uses to determine if a
bird is real or not? I have seen, and see reports of, exotic birds on
occasion, and they are almost all casually discarded as escaped domestics
without anyone objecting, even though most if not all of them are, like this
sparrow, perfectly capable of having flown here from whichever corner of the
world they usually inhabit. What makes this bird any different? If the
committee gets to decide whether a bird counts or not, usually without any of
them having seen it for themselves, then there needs to be some SOLID criteria
dictating what is and is not accepted, and that needs to be made clear to all
the birders. A decision of "well, you can buy them on the free market so it
must be an escaped domestic" or "Someone has one of those as a pet in [insert
name of nearby town]" or "It can decide to fly up here from South America so it
could be a real sighting" are all insufficient, in my opinion.
In the end, none of us really KNOWS where these birds come from.
http://www.birdsexpress.net/rufous-collared-sparrow.html
$35 gets you one
Dennis Garrison
Paonia, Delta County
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