Hi Tweets,

Jerry Tangren writes:

>If you enjoy rare bird committees check out this web site
>
>http://www.mindspring.com/~rlbunn/degrees.html

Hahaha, they sound like a right roarin' bunch.

The above group is refreshing. Ordinarily, 'enjoy' is a word that I would
seldom use in the same sentence as 'rare bird committees'. They're too often
terrifically slow, inefficient, sometimes arbitrary, even (though very
rarely) dishonest, opaque, and unaccountable for their decisions. Rarely
does the observer--without whom rarity committees would have no raison
d'etre--receive acknowledgement or thanks; rather, the underlying attitude
seems to be 'give us your report if you want it to stand the slightest
chance of acceptance. If you want to find out what we decide, check next
year's Audubon Field Notes--now shove off and stop bugging us.'

Typically, from the instant that an observer hands the report to a rarities
committee, he or she completely loses sight, sound and ownership of that
record. Without a word of this being said to the observer, the report
effectively becomes the property of the rarities committee, and the observer
has no further involvement in the process whatever the degree of the
observer's interest, and often that interest is seen as an irritant. Unless
he or she independently publishes details of the observation, the observer
won't even get the credit for the published sighting in the literature. Once
the reports are out their hands, observers are removed from the process.

Too often, the underlying (and mostly unexamined) principle seems to be that
birders and their observations exist to keep rarities committees in
business, and that their involvement beyond the mere provision of grist for
the committee's mill is an unwelcome nuisance. I'd submit this is unhealthy.

I'd like to see rarities committees show more explicit and *sincere*
appreciation to and acknowledgement of the observers who contribute (never
submit! even the language reveals the true relationships in the process!
though participants on either side of the divide are almost totally unaware
of them) to them; to become timely in their decisions and more accountable
for them (and stress that I make no comment on the quality of those
decisions--mostly I'm interested in the process); I'd like to see observers
being given updates on the status of their reports; and I'd like to see the
decision-making become more transparent, so that if interested observers
wanted to see how rarity committees actually worked, they could. This way
observers could be come a more active part of this process rather than
simple providers of fodder.

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)