I whipped this up in a hurry last night then forgot to send it. Here perhaps
some fodder for thought:

97-12-17 Gene Hunn [was: Re: Skagit flats question] writes:

<< Rare bird reports are NEVER too late. We've even reviewed reports from
1806.... >>

Well...!!!! That *IS* good news! That's almost 192 years! Which sounds like
there might just still be a shred of time! :-))

Which reminds me... *again*..., of Phil Mattocks admonition... well not
really; more like a suggestion.... a nudge if you will.... a subtle hint...
at a recent past WOS meeting about those three December Mottled Petrels off
Pacific Co. two or three years back. See! I don't even remember! <:-(( I
guess I never really thought of them as really being all 'that' rare and
unusual, as like in the 'less than the 15 records range', and guess I thought
just by slipping them in one time on Tweeters was enough. Guess not, huh.
But I can resurrect them from my notes along with some Cook's Petrels
(collective 'ooh ahh'), and maybe a few other things. No first state records
pending, sorry; unless you backdate the Cook's Petrels. Personally, I don't
think I'm going to live to be 192 years old, so I promise to be a good little
boy now and try harder. Hey! Force-man!! -- oh...*ding dong* ...yoo
hooo...pssst! You alive up there? You must have a record or two tucked away
somewhere, eh?

Mike -- You gotta help me out with the Cook's which I'm actually looking at
right now, believe it or not. I'm stunned in embarrassed disbelief! I
forgot; they are actually pasted up on the wall on one of those hundreds of
yellow stick-em things that I wall paper the house with, plastered all over
the place here in my work study, 6 inches(!) above the top of my computer
screen, 19 inches in front of my nose!!! "I am so organized", I say smugly.
Oh God!! I measured it with a ruler! It's true!! LOL!!! Hadn't looked
there in years! This means only one thing of course; I was going to do
something about these sightings sometime soon (soon = a general geological
frame of reference of course which I like to use to categorize priorities).

Well here's the low-down skivy straight off the yellow stick-em things looking
back at me at eye level from the wall as I speak (write); [this is real time
stuff here folks... pretty scary. Bear with me...]. hummummmdedummm.... Okay,
Cook's Petrels --- Total, three sightings, five individuals.
-- 7/24/94 -- (1), 4611'N, 12910'W (12 nmiles NW Thompson Sea Mount);
-- 7/26/94 -- (3). 4510'N, 13038'W (Vance Seamount + some plumage notes);
-- 7/26/94 -- (1), 4511'N, 12937'W (Vance Seamount + some plumage notes).
I'm not even real sure where on the state or provincial scale of things these
critters were. Months at sea and somebody starts hounding me for something as
trivial as state boundaries! These aren't the sort of something we pay much
attention to unless there is a port'o'call about to happen in Astoria or
somewhere and everyone goes off and drinks themselves to death. Mike Force is
much better at such finite detail than me I'm afraid. When Mike Force is
onboard these NOAA cruises as the official full time dedicated birder, you can
believe nothing escapes detection, and the rest of us can go about our other
duties comfortable in knowing that the birds are in good hands. I shouldn't
be saying that... now you'll go hound him. When Mike or some other birder
isn't onboard, I try to do the best I can to fill the slack and record notable
sightings at best, and am in the end pretty good at generalizing an overview
of the cruise. Okay, ummm....Just looking here..............
Hummuumdedumm..., uh oh... oops, these..look..like... umm... yes, ...damn!
...these are all Oregon. Okay, never mind; back to sleep Washington. Some
may also be outside 200 nmiles, maybe all of 'em, but I'll have to look at a
chart to see where for sure and I don't have one right here handy.

Hmm. This is a real let down bummer folks. I could have sworn that there was
one sighting off Gray's Canyon on that same July 1994 cruise. I distinctly
remember a pair of birds "72 nmiles west of Gray's Harbor". I remember
running down to the bridge, checking it out and measuring it on the navigation
chart at the time and patting myself on the back for a new Washington 'tick'.
I'll have to root around for something more specific, like something actually
written down that wasn't on a discarded scrap of paper or on a data sheet now
buried deep in the heap in San Diego. I fear this one might be slipping
through the cracks though, and in the now horrorfied stern frowning eyes of
the WRBC, may have to be tossed unless I find even a little note jotted down
somewhere, cuz right now, I don't even know the exact date. Mid-late July,
1994, the huge Chelan County. / Leavenworth forest fires were raging. Funny
how I remember stuff like 'that'. Will this be good enough??? Didn't think
so.

So, maybe those 'official' Washington seabirds *are* rarer than I thought!
The Mottled's were right off due west of the Columbia River (~60 nmiles) and
extreme SW Pacific Co, 'almost' Oregon, but most definitely Washington. I was
alone on the "McArthur" and I do have notes on those. If only the Columbia
River hadn't taken that nasty right turn at Portland, we'd be in like flint
and this wouldn't all seem so screwed up. I guess the Force-man and I are
going to have to march on down to Oregon and OBOL with these ones (Cook's);
sorry Washington. Easy come, easy go. Oh, BTW, Is dredging a new channel and
straightening the river an option?

Some Washington seabirds may not now be so 'rare' as they are "difficult" due
to extenuating circumstances. So never mind about Oregon; the bigger fly in
the ointment as I see it here for Washington pelagic birders is more with
British Columbia crowding in from the north with their Economic Exclusive Zone
(EEZ) running SW out of the mouth of the Strait. Well... not just crowding
in, but stealing our thunder, lock stock and barrel. The 49th Parallel means
absolutely nothing west of Cape Flattery! This leaves precious little room
for Washington. We might as well just pack it up and move elsewhere. Or...
go to war. What was wrong with just running the line down the middle, and
straight west off the mouth of the Strait, instead of running it off to the SW
toward Hawaii? I do so wish *I* had been in charge of this matter at the
time! There is a reason; it's complicated, and if we want to get into it,
let's wait 'til after the first of the year. No reason spoiling the holidays
over a birding border dispute (the BBD) with Canada right now. I do though,
see a birders WA/BC border dispute looming, perhaps as a result of this post.
And you thought the salmon wars were something! You ain't seen nuthin' yet!!
Don't be amessin' with 'dem birders and their state listing potential (the
SLP)!

You have no idea how frustrated and irritated I get over this. Just ask Mike
if I just never shut up about it and grumble on ("keep left, keep left") as
we're heading out of the Strait. Nearly every cruise sailing out of Lake
Union for the vast wide open Pacific, promptly turns left at Cape Flattery,
and heads south for Oregon and California, and rather than risk a feud with
Canada over permits, I wake up in the morning and the next thing I know, we're
south of the Columbia River already. If we should happen to be turning right
and going to Alaska, heaven forbid, then we have to put blind folds on and
pretend we're not doing anything but transiting. HA!!

I have a proposed solution for this problem and it's called 'sharing'. Why
can't BC and Washington just share the same waters when it comes to birds and
the official record keeping? Fish? I suppose not for now; salmon wars make
for good print and TV for now; but birds? Dispersal and migration of pelagic
birds off the west coast is generally latitudinal, north/south, and in MMHO,
latitudinal distribution is more relevant than worrying so much about
governmentally set state, provincial, or national boundaries, and for the sake
of record keeping would make more sense if linked to the state's or country's
latitudinal zones. Say something hot like a Solander's Petrel is seen 150
nmiles due west of Westport. It's off Washington, but technically, it's
really in Canada. Who get's to claim it? Why not just 'share' it if the
declared EEZ has to be the way it is? But a Canadian record for something
actually off Westport just doesn't really quite sound or seem right , does it.

I don't even want to know right how New York and New Jersey have resolved this
dilemma, nor Florida and Alabama. I think the ABA has some sort of guidelines
or something, no? Alaska oh-so cleverly nipped that potential conflict with
Canada in the bud early on as they so deftly snatched up that long narrow
coastal strip called the "panhandle" right out from under the nose of Canada,
much to the consternation of Canadians, I'm sure, eh. I know back in the
early '70's, when pelagic trips and seabirding was a new concept on the East
Coast, and I was riding the crest of organizing and leading a decade's worth
of those early pioneering trips off Ocean City, MD, the matter was often
discussed. An official policy was then vague. Some adopted or just assumed 3
miles, 12 miles, and then by-and-by, ABA kind of came around and sort of set
it at 100 miles.

By then though, I was moving along and getting into other things, longer and
dedicated research cruises on larger and much less seasickening vessels, and I
started learning more about the Economic Exclusive Zone (EEZ), a generally and
now pretty much global set standard for nearly all countries with a border or
beach that touches an ocean, as well as including said such EEZ perimeters
around any countries claimed territorial islands, no matter how small or
seemingly irrelevant. A worse case example: the isolated and uninhabited tiny
desert atoll (the all time 'classic' desert island BTW), Clipperton Island off
Mexico; France! ...and all 200 nmiles surrounding it! And they wonder why or
who is taking down and "stealing" the French flag every time we stop off there
to count boobies. Oops! I shouldn't have said that. Nice souvenir though
'-). Also, I've always firmly believed and maintained that the biggest
mistake Russia ever ever made in it's entire history was so cheaply selling
off the vast "useless wasteland" of Alaska including the entire Aleutian Chain
to the U.S. My-Oh-My! Did you guys screw up or what?!! So there now; look
at *our* territorial borders!! *That* was the very best investment of all
time the United States ever made! Yeee-haw!! N.A. birders rejoice!

Anyway and by the mid-70's, I decided and declared that the geographical
limits for being able to count a bird to a state list extended to the
boundaries of the EEZ, 200 nmiles. It only made sense; common sense! Forget
it ABA; 100 miles (nautical miles? / statute miles? -- who knows what they
meant) was not good enough for me. And so it came to pass and the 200 nmile
EEZ was gradually incorporated into the ABA 'rules' for things pertaining to
bird record keeping. Since that rip-roaring high energy decade of the '70's
(I was completely out of control then -- the inexhaustible energies of youth I
guess), I kind of moved away from the whole listing game as well as moving to
Washington where I've been rather quietly home-ported when not at sea ever
since, and only until fairly recently, have been poking my nose back into the
general milieu of socialized birding again. And am rather enjoying it once
again I might add.

So here I am. Started out with a one-liner reply to Gene Hunn, and running on
now for two hours(!!). Who said I had too much time on my hands!? '-)

Oh! BTW, such is the irony of life; right in the middle of writing this last
night, Mike Force called me from Vancouver. He sounded so excited and talked
so fast I could hardly keep up, going on and on about the seas running black
and carpeted with hundreds of thousands of Crested Auklets he'd just seen in
Akutan Pass (Aleutians) and the wrecks of Crested and Whiskered Auklets that
came aboard the Canadian R/V "Riker" (sp?) at night. I told him he should
write a little something for Tweeters about all this, but I don't know if
he'll have time being in such a rush now between the Alaska trip and soon
departing again for several months, a NOAA cruise to Antarctica for a month,
followed by lonesome birding on a shoestring in Chile for a couple more.
Anyway, between all this and animated chatter about a lot of other stuff going
on around, I forgot to ask him about the Cook's Petrels and other records of
significance he and we have seen that might be considered 'off Washington'.
One other piece of good news though was that the Oregon Streaked Shearwater we
saw at Hecata Bank a couple of years ago had been submitted to "Western
Birds".

Night all... Your's sincerely,
AND ....still sitting and whimpering in the corner of the doghouse with
Michael with our pointy little hats on, --Richard <:-|| Oh, you can maybe
excuse Michael now. Me? I'll just stay here and pout awhile longer.

Richard Rowlett (Pagodroma at aol.com)
47.56N, 122.13W
(Seattle/Bellevue, WA USA)