Subject: Re: Prior Publication (was Confirmed Wood Sandpiper)
Date: Jul 26 11:01:03 1995
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


This is in response to Russell Rogers' posting about the subject, which I'm
not appending here, as I assume everyone has it available.

Russell, thanks for your spirited defense of quick publication of bird
sightings. I think you didn't make enough of Michael Price's comments,
which were basically a plea for timely bird-record committee action and
publishing, the lack of which you have so effectively criticized. I concur
entirely and should have been clearer in expressing these same thoughts. I
don't think anyone on the Washington Bird Records Committee (WBRC) is proud
of the publishing record of the committee.

I am going to propose at the next WBRC meeting that we develop a Rapid
Response system (hopefully both more rapid and more effective than that in
Bosnia) so that we can immediately vote by mail or phone or whatever it
takes on at least reports that would be new state records, so there is
essentially no delay. These records then would be published in the next
available WOSNEWS as *certified* with the Good Record Committee Seal of
Approval.

Remember, this is going to be my proposal; I can't vouch for the
committee's accepting and acting on it. Other records would have to wait
for the biannual meeting date, but I intend to explore ways to speed up the
publication of the deliberations of those meetings too. I understand your
frustration and that of observers who don't know what's going on.

Having said that, I still agree with my earlier posting :-) In the first,
and only so far, report of the WBRC, we had to comment on 17 records that
had been published but that were subsequently rejected. They include a
Falcated Teal, a Wood Sandpiper, a Temminck's Stint, an Iceland Gull, 2
Brown Thrashers, a Tennessee Warbler, a Magnolia Warbler, a Cape May
Warbler, a Black-throated Blue Warbler, a Black-throated Green Warbler, a
Blackburnian Warbler, a Blackpoll Warbler, a Mourning Warbler, and 3
Orchard Orioles.

All of these records are in the category of the Wood Sandpiper from
Louisiana--some compiler from out of state who doesn't have access to
Washington Birds (where the WBRC report was published) will include them in
a list of out-of-range records of the species. Few people will check the
bird-record committee records from every state and province to see if
records published in American Birds are really valid. Parenthetically, I
*did* do just that for the rare shorebird records that I accepted in my
book, but it was relatively easy to do it for only a few states and part of
a province.

These 17 rejected but published records come from a period of >17 years, so
they are indeed at very low frequency. Nevertheless, they produce the kind
of "noise" that I think we can do without. You are absolutely right that
at present depending on the publication schedule of bird-record committees
to keep the birding community up to date is not the answer, ignoring any
questions about the competence of these committees. The answer would be
(1) to get the BRCs off their butts, and (2) to keep editorial standards
for current publications as high as possible, which, as you wrote, you are
doing.

One of our points of disagreement clearly involves observer feedback. It
is *just* because, as you wrote, some people are so pleased to see their
names in print that I am as critical as I am about these reports. To put
it in as polarized a way as I can (realizing that the dichotomy is too
extreme), is the publication of bird sightings an effort at crowd pleasing,
or is it an effort to document as accurately as possible what's going on in
nature? Where do you compromise if there's some doubt? I would always err
on the conservative side, even if occasionally a baby bird got thrown out
with the bath water.

As a person, I'm very interested in those people around me being happy. As
an ornithologist, however, I'm interested in knowing the facts about bird
life, and that doesn't include a whole lot of regret when I vote against a
bird report that I consider inadequately documented. I should add that in
our WBRC deliberations we regularly vote against each others' reports, and
I don't think any friendships have been sundered therefrom (well, maybe
stressed a little).

I'm sorry not all of the bird-record committee members are on tweeters to
collectively respond. I'm forwarding this to Bill Tweit (as well as the
earlier comments), and 2 other members receive tweeters, but half the
committee isn't on the air. Here's to dialogues, or preferably
multilogues!

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416