This message has been approved by the ONTBIRDS coordinator Good morning everyone
Since last December, the invasion of Mexican vagrants visiting the Rio Grande Valley in Texas has been beyond phenomenal. There has not been such a magical array of TBRC Review Birds in the valley in more than 25 years. It is estimated that more than 9000 birders (including some 350 from Canada) will have made at least one trip to south Texas to look for these rare Mexican birds. This remarkable occurrence prompted John Arvin, a long time tour leader and an expert on birds of Texas, to post the following message on TEXBIRDS. "If you think that this season will go down in the record books, it won't!! I say this because SO FEW of the incredible birds around, WILL actually be documented." He went on to paraphrase a slogan that he likes "WHAT'S DOCUMENTED IS HISTORY; WHAT'S NOT IS MYSTERY." He continues, "Posting to TEXBIRDS or sending in a seasonal report to North American Birds does not document these records. A decade or two down the road, any undocumented record will reside only in the imperfect memories of those birders fortunate enough to be around for this amazing season. And when they are gone...." This message to TEXBIRDS from John Arvin resulted in many pro and con responses; I will quote only a few. Daniel Jones said, "There has to be some method of quality control. This is not just about our view of this amazing incursion of Mexican birds, but how scientists and researchers will view this phenomenon a hundred years from now." Jim Stevenson put it this way "Science is not a collection of facts and information, it is a process of discovering the truth - like correct identification. That's what all this documentation thing is about." He goes on to talk about a Social Flycatcher that was found earlier this year in Texas. "If we do not accept the Social Flycatcher record, that doesn't mean it wasn't here, just like a 'not guilty' verdict in the OJ trial didn't necessarily mean he was innocent. There just wasn't enough evidence to be sure." He continues, "While we are tempted to just bird with our guides and journals, and leave the documenting to others, let's remember that the writings in these guides and journals were based on a method years ago when people paid the price with their time and effort to document so that we could know. The fact that some of these Mexican birds aren't even *in* the field guides cries out for us to do our best to document them for future generations. Mark Lockwood points out that "Birders have a real opportunity to contribute to science. Every book you use (National Geo, Sibley's, Kaufman, to name only a few) is a direct reflection of field observations that are supported by written documentation when needed." Dave DeReamus states: "The all-too-common problem of not documenting is caused by several things: 1) When many birders see a particular rarity, they assume that someone ELSE will take the time to write up the documentation; 2) With everyone's time so valuable today, most birders don't want to use any of it to do a write-up; 3) Many birders think that if the bird has been documented by a photo, then a written write-up is no longer necessary. David Powell wrote: "In an era where just about everybody has e-mail and a digital camera, and these two factors being huge in the field of information storage and exchange, do I sense bird record committees sensing their own imminent demise?" Bill Eley responded to David Powell's comments. "E-mail and some digital pictures spread around the web can hardly be considered true scientific documentation. Photographs and specimens housed at reputable museums and other repositories are the only way to ensure bird records are available to this and future generations. I shudder to think of a world without bird record committees to professionally evaluate these photos. TEXBIRDS is not a museum and it's not a repository. It could go away anytime. Let me site an example. Suppose I photographed a very rare bird, a first for North America, and dutifully posted the picture on my personal website, and announced it to TEXBIRDS. Were I to shut down my website, or my computer trashes and all my stuff is gone, goodbye first record for North America. Yes, the bird I saw existed, but it wasn't documented. A hundred years from now, what's left?" One more quote from TEXBIRDS. Anthony Hewetson makes some very good points when he says: "No-one should be made to feel as if they must document a given bird sighting unless they want to. Reports filed under duress are generally not all that useful. That said, it is a damn shame when a rare bird is reported and scores of birders go out to see it, and perhaps only one person (the 62nd person to see it) submits documentation. Whether or not an individual birder decides to file a report is up to them - this is a hobby for some; not an all-consuming obsession. For those of us who are a little, umm, obsessed, it would be good to do the best job possible when we report." As John Arvin said " WHAT'S DOCUMENTED IS HISTORY; WHAT'S NOT IS MYSTERY." Doug Lockrey told me that more than 2400 birders saw the Golden-crowned Sparrow in Whitby. In excess of 500 birders signed the Haines guest book when they came to see the Rufous Hummingbird in Niagara Falls. Several hundred birders saw the Pyrrhuloxia at Eagle, the Western Grebe at Fifty Point, and the Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch in Chelmsford and on it goes. If you have taken the time to write-up a report for the OBRC on any recent Review List bird, please accept our sincere thanks. For those of you who have not done so as yet, may I respectfully urge you to do so. Reports can be submitted electronically at www.ofo.ca/obrc, or by surface mail direct to Bill Crins, OBRC Secretary, 170 Middlefield Road, Peterborough, ON. K9J 8G1. Documentation should include all information about the sighting, a full description of the bird(s), and full names including any initials of all observers. Of critical importance are the first and last dates of a birds occurrence, so any help in this regard would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read this rather lengthy message. Kayo Kayo Roy 13 Kinsman Court Fonthill, ON L0S 1E3 [EMAIL PROTECTED] From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Apr 15 12:20:12 2005 Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: from ccshst09.cs.uoguelph.ca (ccshst09.cs.uoguelph.ca [131.104.96.18]) by king.hwcn.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D16A164077 for <[email protected]>; Fri, 15 Apr 2005 12:20:12 -0400 (EDT) Received: from uoguelph.ca ([131.104.71.30])j3FGUqo1024875 for <[email protected]>; Fri, 15 Apr 2005 12:30:55 -0400 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 12:36:59 -0400 From: Chris Earley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: [email protected] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.44 Subject: [Ontbirds] Arboretum bird workshops - warblers, sparrows, cavity nesters, bird sounds X-BeenThere: [email protected] X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:20:13 -0000 Hi, everyone, This post was approved by Mark. The Arboretum, University of Guelph, has space in the following interactive bird workshops. For more details, please go to our website at www.uoguelph.ca/arboretum or e-mail me privately. Many Ontbirds members have benefitted from these workhops - you can, too! Note: You must preregister for all workshops - call 519-824-4120 ext. 52358. Warbler Workshop level 2: The Less Common Ones Friday, April 29, 2005, 9am - 4pm, $50 - note: please preregister soon! Bird Sounds Workshop Wednesday, May 25, 2005, 7:30am - 4 pm, $55 Sparrow Workshop: Those Little Brown Jobs Friday, May 27, 9 am - 4pm, $50 How to Attract Birds to Birdhouses Workshop Saturday, May 28, 2005, 9am - 4pm, $45 Cheers, Chris - Chris Earley Interpretive Biologist / Education Coordinator The Arboretum, University of Guelph Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1 Canada phone: (519)824-4120 ext. 52201 fax: (519)763-9598 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] website: www.uoguelph.ca/arboretum "The chief aim of interpretation is not instruction, but provocation." - Freeman Tilden
