-----Original Message----- From: Stevan Hawkins [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 1:59 PM To: '[email protected]'; 'mnbird' Subject: RE: [mnbird] [mou-net] Potential First State Record Won't Be Shared
Steve: http://www.texasbirds.org/tbrc/stygowl.htm has photographs and the particulars about the two Stygian Owl reports that I was able to find in a few minutes. Note that both sightings were at a very heavily birded location, Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park. Everything tells me that it is doubtful that these birds were the only ones that have been in the United States. My feeling is that they have been on ranches, parks and other wild areas with similar habitat from the mouth of the Rio Grande to El Paso. Those other birds may not have been seen or recognized. Collared Plover http://www.texasbirds.org/tbrc/collplov.htm was seen for four days in 1992. So far as I know, this is the first and only record of this species for the United States. This bird that looks like a baby Killdeer was kind enough to show up at ponds at the Uvalde National Fish Hatchery. Those ponds look like any number of stock ponds along the entire US-Mexico border. It happened that a Texas Ornithological Society convention was held on that same weekend. Presumably one of the field trips went to the fish hatchery and the bird was found. If TOS had not had a field trip to the fish hatchery, would the bird have been recognized? Joe Ideker was a source and inspiration for a number of us who birded the Lower Rio Grande Valley in the 1970s and 1980s. One time he told me about how a sighting some friends of his had had. The couple have moved to McAllen, Pharr, Weslaco, or one of the area towns from Costa Rica. When they saw a bird that they were used to seeing back home, they thought that it was no big deal. All it was was a Fork-tailed Flycatcher. By the time they got around to telling Mr. Ideker about it, it was a week or a month after the bird had left. The net result was that no documentation = no record. Just as "If a log falls in the woods and nothing hears it, then no sound is made", it follows that "If a rare bird is found and nobody documents it, then as far as science is concerned, it does not exist". Contrasting example: On a Thursday in August 1982 I was helping a friend re-roof his house. The house was near a creek bottom. A hawk had been circling around the woods along the creek, but I had not paid attention to it. Finally when its circling came over my head I saw the undersides of the first Swallow-tailed Kite that had been at least reported in San Antonio Texas in 40-60 or more years. I ran down the ladder facing outwards and got on the phone to call important people in San Antonio bird records circles, all of whom laughed at me as they accused me of being drunk or otherwise intoxicated. The following Tuesday Vernon Ellis took his wife to a nearby hair salon. Vernon goes outside to smoke. The man looks across West Avenue and sees his Bexar County, possibly lifer, Swallow-tailed Kite flying over the wooded Aggie Park and the creek that went through it. The man about has a heart attack, but calls the same people who had laughed at me. The following day he called me. At first I figured that it was to laugh at me. The net results were that we got the last laugh and that a valuable lesson was learned by lots of people. After that record this species started showing up in the area once in a while in the fall during migration. As to whether not the Texas Bird Records Committee accepted Vernon's and my bird, I don't know. That sighting and subsequent sightings of this species have been included on every subsequent edition of the Bexar County checklist. After that Swallow-tailed Kite populations expanded to the point that on one hawk watch on the coast there were four or five Swallow-tailed Kites visible at one time. On the other hand, when someone reported a Red-cockaded Woodpecker on a San Antonio Christmas Bird Count, the bird was rejected, if only due to the lack of photographic proof. In this case the purported species is such an extreme habitat specialist that finding one in San Antonio was essentially impossible, at least as far as we on the San Antonio rare birds committee were concerned in the early 1980s. One day I glanced at the front page of the McKenzie County Farmer. The MCF is the newspaper for McKenzie County, North Dakota. There was a photo of "migrating geese", some flying, some on in the water on the front page. The ones sitting still were Canada Geese, which nest in McKenzie County. Two of the "geese" had what looked like three-foot long necks, making them most probably Tundra Swans. Nobody in the county recognized the birds or at least reported them. Having learned my lessons from previous conversations and experience well, I passed on this information to ND-Birds so that the state committee would have the data point. All of these examples should be extended to all checklists and records committees because similar incidents with other species have occurred almost certainly everywhere. Given time and people paying attention to what they see, birds equally good and glamorous as some of the above can be found almost everywhere in North America. If people don't report the bird, then nobody else can see it and put in their input or otherwise record what was seen or heard. No guts means that nobody laughs at the reporter, but no guts also means that valuable data can be lost. So, report your data and let them fall where they fall. Onward! Steve Stevan Hawkins San Antonio TX -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Weston Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 1:49 AM To: [email protected]; mnbird Subject: Re: [mnbird] [mou-net] Potential First State Record Won't Be Shared There are a couple of issues relating to sharing and reporting birds. First is the rare bird that can not be adequately reported to be accepted. Very first state records are accepted without a picture. One bird that was accepted without a picture was the first and only state record of the Crested Caracara. True it was a well known, reputible observer and an unmistakable bird. While it is unknown in neighboring states, it was seen a few days later in Ontario. I reported and wrote up a bird that has never been seen in Minnesota. It has been found in neighboring states, but not here. The good news was that it hung around for at least four more days. I was able to refind it both times I looked in those days. The trouble was that I did not have a camera worth taking a picture. The other problem was that nobody believed my find. It was a female Black-chinned Hummingbird. I wrote it up and it was not accepted. If I was on MOURC, voting on my write up, I would not have accepted it. It is too bad that I couldn't get people to believe me, but I believe it was important to document the sighting. The first sighting of a Stygian Owl north of the Rio Grande was not reported until about fifteen years later, after someone else reported one, which promted the birder to dig out that picture of a strange owl that he had taken years before. I do not remember if the documentation on the second Stygian was any good. Of course there is the bird that was found only once in North American and seen by no birders. The birders visiting the community did not believe the kid who found it when he offered to take them to view it. So, the kid went out and shot the only Hoopoe ever documented in North America. Strange birds can show up anywhere. I believe that it is important to report those birds, even if it is unlikely to be accepted. There are good reasons not to report to the listservs certain birds. Certain nesting birds may be suseptible to disturbance, such as a nesting loon. I do not understand the lack of report of a Worm-eating Warbler in the metro area. This is a bird that is unlikely to be nesting in the area, but, again, I do not understand why the bird was not reported. Anyway... just a few thoughts. Steve Weston on Quiggley Lake in Eagan, MN [email protected] _______________________________________________ mnbird mailing list [email protected] http://lists.mnbird.net/mailman/listinfo/mnbird Unsubscribe: %(user_optionsurl)s ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
