In a message dated 96-06-04 14:32:40 EDT, Brad Schram writes:

>You may have trouble with the CBRC due to single
>observer--and there may be skeptics at that distance, but then again, they
>haven't looked through your Big Eyes.

Hello Brad:

Yep! This is precisely the uncomfortable paradox that I find myself in most
of my life now. *Rare* bird, single observer. I don't know how to deal with
such, so I usually don't. No one much would even have caught wind of this
one had Greg Smith not happened to have discovered me quietly *clicking* away
back during the 1994 gray whale surveys. Since about 1980, I dropped out of
the ABA and general birding scene because my life took a turn to pretty
full-time sea duty, and have logged some 80,000 hours of sea time since I
first got into it in 1971 participating in and conducting line transect
survey work for whales and dolphins world-wide, and birds on the side. Birds
are always ancillary -- on the side. Simply put, mammals pay the bills,
birds don't. It is a rather nice symbiotic relationship however. Having a
love with seabirds plus some weird hard drive to forever be on the look-out
anywhere and everywhere I happen to be, no matter how routine and mundane,
and such a bent keeps me tuned and aware of every little nuance going on *out
there*.

I had a very bad experience back in May, 1980, when I was co-leading a
*WINGS* Alaska tour with Jon Dunn, Rich Stalcup, and Will Russell, which I'm
sorry to say burned me for life, so it seems, to the totally crazed birding /
listing scene, at least of that era. Here we are, three weeks in all of the
splendor of Alaska, and yet, the pressure was on to produce a new or rare
bird every 15 minutes or everyone would become grouchy to down-right nasty.
Never mind anything else about Alaska. It was too much. Screw you and
screw this! So I retreated to the *closet* as it were, and pursued birding
along a vain which I discovered was far more enlightening, diverse,
interesting, and was unbelievablly compatable with how I've come to make a
living, albeit usually on the edge, and usually just enough to make ends
meet.

Anyway, birders and birding seems to have come of age or matured since the
hey-day, crazy days of the '70's. I'm even threatening to join ABA again,
just for the magazine (*Birding*). Some pretty impressive stuff in there and
right sophisticated. I've seen some stray copies around recently and think
I'm selling myself short by not subscribing. Likewise, *American Birds* (or
whatever it's called now) which I quit receiving in the early 1980's.

Lots of sacrifices for sure. My life is so far out of the mainstream and I
usually don't have much contact with anyone much who's not directly part of
*our little family* like Bob Pitman (San Diego) and Mike Force (Vancouver,
B.C.) for example. Computers and the *net* have changed that a little. At
least I'm poking my nose out of the closet to sniff around and see what's
going on, and am experimenting with it as a possible outlet for sharing some
ancillary birding experiences. There seems to be no outlet for reporting
such things otherwise. Maverick single observer sightings, and routinely
even, are bound to raise eyebrows and skepticism among the weekend birder
elete who pursue it more as a diversion and hobby than a life. [God! I need
a hobby! :)] And California as the rest of North America has it's fair
share. So, why even bother. I don't have time to deal with it for one, and
once one project is finished, I'm off to the next, hence a *new life* begins,
full bore 100%, and the previous life (like Piedras Blancas, for example)
becomes archieved in the ancient history file -- long dead and forgotten
...until next time.

One of the thrills of birding is in it's social aspect. Finding *rarities*
and being able to share them with others is always satisfying and tends to
make historical acceptance much easier. Photo documentation and a multitude
of observers is even better. So what chance do I have? Birding virtually
full time by nature of the job has it's drawbacks. I sit on a gold mine of
data -- too much, but not likely acceptable by current AOU, ABA, etc. wisdom.
Thus, I don't bother reporting stuff any more. There is no proof or
corroboration -- just my word, and that I'm sure wouldn't be good enough in a
historical context 200 years from now. So, I just do it for the sake of
doing it, and be satisfied with that.

Once upon a time, I guess I was considered among that *weekend birder elete*
when I lived back on the East Coast, Washington, D.C., and was totally driven
by birding and listing, and State listing (Maryland). This was back in the
'70's when birding was coming of age. In 1972, I started a decade of pelagic
trips off Ocean City, MD, the beginning of the pelagic trip concept amongst
East Coast birders at least. Those yeilded numerous *State Records*, all
photographed and documented and shared with numerous observers, including
such goodies as yellow-nosed albatross. I probably added ten to the State
list (with photo documentation), such things as sage thrasher, limpkin, and
assorted seabirds, among others, and little stint in Delaware. But... I
burned out, and in 1982, packed up, moved out, and without even looking back
in the rear view mirror, headed off to Seattle to start a *new* life.

Anyway, I no longer keep a *life* list, or much of any kind, although I am
starting to mess around with Washington some, just for fun, but not to the
extent that I really have to go out of my way to see something, even probable
once-in-a-lifetime goodies. Maryland I could manage (back then at least but
never again). The whole state is about the size of SLO Co. I suppose.
Washington is too big. California: forget it! I suppose NA is around 650
or so, but I've not been keeping track of numbers since 1980. World wide --
God! Who knows??!! I jot down *lifers* with date and place in the
appropriate field guide that I happen to be using for where I happen to be,
but apart from that, there is no organization or drive to do so further.
Maybe some day when I have utterly nothing else to do, I'll sit down and try
to assimilate a count.

These days and for most of the past 16 years, such documentation of
*rarities* is difficult to impossible to secure in most cases. *Rare* birds
just go with the territory, and a lot of those *rare* birds (like manx
shearwater and maybe yellow-billed loon, at least in some years) aren't all
that *rare* by my definition and experience. There wasn't anything I could
do about the shy albatross apart from just watch it go by and try and write
up some good notes on it. There is nothing more I can say about it. Here one
minute, gone the next. It came, it saw, it left. I came, I saw, was briefly
distracted, then resumed looking at loons. It, like everything else, I
probably wouldn't even submit to the California Records Committee, and I have
no idea how to do so anyway. I'll leave that to your discretion. At the
very best, it might be listed as *hypothetical*. If I were on the committee,
that's probably what I'd do with it, if not just ignore it (and all the rest)
altogether. Again, had it not been for Greg Smith in 1994, and now my
computer, no one would be any to the wiser about this one (SHAL) or anything
else.

Now, that raises the annoying question, especially amongst the academic
elete, "why collect data if you never publish it?" This is such a tiresome,
ignorant, and stupid thing to say. The point is good and valid -- good data
should be published. And, I think this PB stuff is a great data set. But
hearing such over and over from the academic crowd irritates me and really
raises my hackles. I say: *Put your money where your mouth is, or shut the
hell up!* The *publish or perish* crowd have a steady income (i.e. a *real*
job), funding and the backings of institutions and organizations, and a bevy
of students and assistants to do all the *dirty work*, analyze the data, do
the literature searches, and even write up most of the paper in many cases.
Me? I'm just a nobody, out there just trying to squeak by doing something I
really enjoy, take a lot of pride in, think I'm really good at, and driven
for perfection, and all those birds are just a fringe benefit, beyond which,
no support, no nothing. I'm in the field (usually at sea) most of the time,
going from project to project, that such a routine leaves no time to work
anything up properly -- even post summaries in most cases. This series of
postings from PB are, believe me, an anomaly -- an experiment -- and not the
best solution, but the only one available that's relatively quick and dirty.
Whether they are ever considered as valid is open to debate. There are
serious shortcomings in electronic postings of results -- no peer review,
very limited and transitory audience, and hackers to name a few. I only
mention it here because the subject came up again recently in the MARMAM
(marine mammals) BBS and worked me up into an emotional tizzy. My instincts
kept me from going off like a bomb which for what I was thinking, actually
writing it would have been totally unacceptable in a public global electronic
forum.

And when I fall short of perfection, I get depressed. Those PB weekly
summaries were slammed together in such a rush and unchecked that there are
some numerical errors. I kept getting those small alcids mixed up and added
wrong. The bottom line is that there were in fact more ancient murrelets
observed and fewer Xantus than reported. Problem was I had several
categories for those little guys -- XAMU, ANMU, etc. plus small b&w alcids
(murrelets - AN/XA) and small alcids (murrelet/~CAAU). All the MAMU reported
are OK. I also had a high number of northern fulmars for one of those weeks.
That's got to be fixed. Fact is: I had an ID problem mid-day for a couple
days, when the sun was high, light flat, and northbound sooty shearwaters
take on a snub-nosed, thick-headed, thick bill to no billed, similar plumage
appearance and identical jizz (flight) as dark northern fulmars. At the
time, I felt it odd to see 10-20 dark morph northern fulmars at mid-day, an
anomalous take from what I'd come to see as *normal*. Fortunately, I caught
on to the problem early when I saw an ultra-light northern fulmar circling
around out there which appeared so bleached out, my first impression was
*snow petrel* yet having the same NOFU/SOSH mid-day jizz as the others. I
watched that bird (thinking maybe a pure albino SOSH), then saw another, then
saw a bleached PFSH that looked like anything but PFSH, all kind of in the
same time frame before I was able to make sense of the situation. So, those
bad ones have to be changed and totals adjusted accordingly. A minor lapse
and only serious one I'm aware of. One never stops learning the little
things. Otherwise, I'm satisfied and confident of everything else.

Well... almost. Loons. Damn! Reviewing these tapes now, especially for
those periods recorded while I was at the various gray whale stations when I
knew I was missing some, first indications show that I was sometimes missing
a lot more than just a few -- exponentially in some cases. I simply can't
see them in certain light situations, even at 200 meters! I don't think I
missed any big flights, so the overall adjustment may not be that
significant. The ones I tend to miss are singles and the little flocks.
*Epic* flights are always concentrated on the coast line and impossible to
miss; just fast and furious and hard to count sometimes. I'll have to work
with all the data to try and come up with a reasonable estimate, but it looks
like a best estimate overall may be up toward 600,000 (best estimate, all
things considered right now) to maybe 750,000 (tops) range for Pacific loons.
But that was the idea of running the infrared heat sensor and recording it
on video tapes at select key times -- to try and get a feel for what I was
missing. I hate admitting my failures. I feel like it totally and completely
shatters any and all credibility I might have ever had. :( And thus, this
whole crazy marathon was a waste of time.

Brant and scoters: I just count what I see and know that there are a lot
more out there, as for everything else. There is no way to do it all. The
only solution: maybe a team of 3 or 4 *loonatic*observers rotating through
the day on two sets of *big eyes* where birds are the primary target and
whales are ancillary, one doing just loons, and one for everything else.
That will never happen. Ha! They're just *B1RD's* (B-one-RD's if you
didn't read that as written).

I am really glad that you, Greg, and Tom, each had a chance to spend separate
Sunday's with me here, glued to those optics, to begin to see and experience
what it's like around here, it's potential, and experience birding in a
different and exhilerating dimension, like which I've come to take for
granted over the years with the aid of those 'big eyes'. Much use of the 25X
at sea on a big stable platform (e.g. NOAA R/V's) for months and months at a
whack, as well as even here, leads to serious 25X addiction, [as you may have
noticed :)] and is my current *drug of choice*. The very idea of all the
miseries of those stinky little boat pelagic trips is altered and canned
forever -- at least for me. I figure I done paid my dues dearly to that ole
buzzard, King Neptune back in the '70's. So, go buy yourselves a set of
those 25's, and a nice RV flatbed to go with 'em, and go bird America like
you've never seen it before.

I've wasted enough time and space now. Back to looking at whale/loon tapes.

Cheers! --Richard


Richard Rowlett <pagodroma at aol.com>
(Bellevue, WA)
currently: Piedras Blancas Lighthouse
San Simeon, California
...but about to be Bellevue WA, ...again, ...sort of....