Hi Tweeters,

On July 25, Dennis Paulson says:

>I'm all for not publishing records of rare birds
>until the relevant committee has reviewed them, but I think I'm in a
>teeny-tiny minority.
>HOT NEWS is just too exciting to suppress.

Depends, Dennis, on who's publishing and how high his or her journalistic
standards in regard to publishing unconfirmed material; an editorial decision.

Prior publication gives the hot stuff, unless photodoc'ed, a specimen
record, or ironclad confirmed, all the journalistic integrity of something
in a supermarket tabloid (I Saw the Black-browed Albatross--And Lived!
Fork-tailed Flycatcher Vagrancy: Is an Alien Intelligence At Work? Elvis
Seen on Westport Pelagic--"His singin' of 'Bridge Over Troubled Waters'
Brought Them Albatrosses In Better 'n Mah Best Popcorn, Lard, 'n
Telescope-Oil Chum" says veteran Pelagic birder, Orwell Schmoontz). Good
editors and reporters *invariably* confirm their content before allowing its
release.

So let's ask the question: whose interests are *really* being served by
publication of rarity records before their adjudication by Rare Birds
Committees (RBC)? Since the only two players in this question are the RBC
and the local community of listers, the answer to that question reveals a
competition of interest between the two. The answer is obvious: listers call
the shots.

Three more questions then arise. Who controls the process of adjudication
and subsequent reporting? What benefit does the the listing community gain
by publication prior to acceptance, though such publication may need to be
retracted? and, why would an RBC, ostensibly the arbiter of a rarity's
acceptability, acquiesce in the arrogation of its powers by birding
publications catering to listers?

In other words, what is more important to the local birding community: a
credible assessment process, or publication of its sightings though that
publication deliberately ignores the assessment process?

It's definitely not a matter of timeliness of reporting. A sighting
published in Audubon Field Notes/American Birds is usually a year old by
time that edition is released. As a typical local illustration, there are
two local Vancouver BC birding publications, both published by the Vancouver
Natural History Society (VNHS), The Wandering Tattler (the VNHS birders'
newsletter which publishes their bird sightings) and Discovery, the VNHS
journal, in which VNHS birders publish 'first record' accounts of species
new to Vancouver, though the VNHS RBC may not assess the sighting(s) for at
least another year. To his enormous credit, the current RBC Chair, John
Dorsey, has got the assessment time-lag down to about three months. The
sightings in both publications are virtually never less than six months old,
and are usually up to a year old. Late-breaking news, this stuff ain't.

Birders Journal, the bimonthly defacto national Canadian birding
publication, has decreased the gap between sighting and publication in some
instances to a few *weeks*. British Birds' contents runs about two to three
months behind the present.

Though Tweeters itself carries reports of definitively-identified but
unconfirmed birds that are sometimes as little as *minutes* old, and though
assessment by an RBC may be months or even a year away, there's a
qualitative difference: a bulletin board does not purport to be a definitive
journal.

Part of the problem is that, for a number of reasons, RBC's are usually
extremely slow in their deliberations (I have an idea or two about how to
speed them up, but that's another post). The period between sighting and RBC
acceptance, particularly after a couple of rounds of a
controversial/equivocal description is sometimes as long as much more than a
year. But where the *committee* may grind along exceedingly slowly, the
*people* who have seen these birds want to see results (which raises two
further questions: Why? and why, among so many other possibilities, is one's
name/sighting in print the desired result?). Prior publication simply fills
the vacuum created by the sluggish pace of RBC decision-making.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
michael_price at mindlink.bc.ca