Bravo! This makes the most sense of anything I've read so far! Sue Morton, Cottonwood, Lyon County ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Williams" <[email protected]> To: "MOU-net" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 10:21 PM Subject: [mou] Comments on MOURC, long
I think Bob Russell has got it right. For me, MOURC keeps far better records of where birders went than of where birds are. MOURC and much of MOU¹s science is sociology instead of biology. Our seasonal reports are anecdotal accounts of random sightings. That does not meet the definition of good science. If a seasonal report tells me that Barred Owl was reported from 25 counties does that say more about where the owls are or more about where the observers were (or were not)? Those two things are not the same. No records of King Rail have been submitted (or perhaps none have met the standards for acceptance), so, therefore, the bird is not here. But, as Bob suggests, did birders actually LOOK for King Rail? Is it a lack of birds or a lack of observer effort? Perhaps it is a lack of direction. If MOURC has questions about the King Rail population in Minnesota it might be better to make appropriate habitat a must-visit requirement for seasonal reporters in certain parts of the state. Do that for a number of years, then assess the data and make an informed decision. Now, before someone tells me that seasonal reports are important and have value to the ornithological community, let me say that I agree. I also have corresponded on this issue with about half a dozen working ornithologists in the American Bird Conservancy, the U.S. Geologic Survey, and the American Museum of Natural History. All without exception say that seasonal reports are important. They are important, however, in large part because something is better than nothing. These correspondents also suggest that seasonal reporting could be improved if observers returned on a regular basis to the same locales, so bird population fluctuations could be tracked season to season and year to year. Much of our bird reporting is driven by the happenstance location of misplaced migrants or the popularity of birding hotspots. How much of this state goes uncovered simply by neglect? In a conversation about this with a former MOURC member I was told that asking observers to do this would spoil their fun. Is that true? Must we choose between better science and fun? Do we publish our official checklist, to be used by ornithologists in who knows how many ways, based on marginal and inadequate information or do we get serious about our science? Can standards be described for seasonal reports? Can observer assignments be made? Can defined efforts be made to provide real data to answer questions now answered only by a lack of data? How can you get a decent (scientific?) answer to a question when you have no solid information with which to work? This doesn¹t even begin to deal with the subjective judgments of MOURC members when dealing with sighting reports that by definition must pass MOURC muster before becoming official. They do their best, no question. They bring years of experience to the effort, no question. They are trying hard to do a good job, no question. Nonetheless, the only thing we know for certain at the end of the day, far too many times, is that observer X was at the intersection of County Roads A and B on such-and-such day and month and that s/he happened to intersect with a bird the identity of which is in question. What do we know for certain here beyond the movements of the observer? Sociology or biology? The other subject we might wish to explore is why we spend so much time and go to such trouble to record those freak birds that for one odd reason or another have strayed far from home and ended up here. In some cases, indeed, we are tracking range expansions. Certainly, the addition of Great-tailed Grackle and Eurasian Collared-Dove to our list of regular species shows the value in that regard. But is it of any particular value to weigh and debate the sighting of, say, a western hummingbird species known to wander but never expected to be a colonizer or an obviously storm-blown bird or a migrant best categorized as directionally deficient? I know, I know how can you tell one from the other? We have to vet them all, just in case. And not doing so certainly reduce the fun of it all. I cast my lot with Paul Kerlinger, ornithologist and author of the book "How Birds Migrate". He writes of migrants far off course, in strange lands because they could not handle flight conditions or simply did not know where they were going, serious flaws for a bird. These individuals, he says, are for the most part destined to die. Their death, he writes, improves the gene pool for that species. How odd to think of us elevating to any importance the identity of a bird here by flaw and soon to make its greatest contribution to nature by expiring. Our recording efforts, our memorializing of this creature in print are like last rites, an elaborate obituary for a little bit of fluff that would otherwise pass unknown. Go to it, MOURC -- a little bit of science, a little bit of funerary pomp and circumstance. Jim Williams Wayzata _______________________________________________ mou-net mailing list [email protected] http://cbs.umn.edu/mailman/listinfo/mou-net
