Hi Tweets,

On Mon, 03 Feb 1997, Michael Kennedy wrote:
>The Victoria Rare Bird Alert is reporting two Violet Green (sic) Swallows
>over the Legislature on the 31st of January...have VGSW been spotted
>anywhere else yet this "Spring"?

Tree & Violet-green Swallows are first northbound insectivore (if the
weather's lousy, they'll eat berries) migrants back to SW coastal BC,
usually in Week 1 or Week 2 February. This is probably the earliest arrival
*ever* for VGSW in British Columbia (any confirmation, Bryan?). As far as I
know, the only other January record(s) for any swallow is for Barn Swallows
which overwintered at the Reifel Refuge a few years ago.

These are likely First-summer males trying to beat the rush to breeding
territory and thereby get the advantage of first possession. If their luck's
good, they live; if not, they starve and/or freeze. It's a gamble that
Winter's close to over, not a sign that Spring is here.

Which segues nicely. Herein my annual plaint (heh, earliest record for that,
too ;-) about birders' confusing and arbitrary usage of English, and equally
regular plea for linguistic common sense: to increase accuracy, decoupling
migration from season is a good justification for referring to migrations
directionally, as in 'northbound' and 'southbound', otherwise you have such
silliness as the late-Winter migrant swallows in the same 'Spring' migration
as early-Summer migrants such as Common Nighthawks; a few weeks after the
latter, the 'Fall' migration begins with southbound shorebirds at the same
time as those northbound Summer residents are just settling in to begin
nesting, and most of it is over by September 21--in other words, 95% of the
'Fall' migration happens between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal
Equinox, the Summer Resident period for those that stay put. To be accurate,
then, one must call it the 'Summer Migration' rather than the 'Fall
Migration'. And so on, ad absurdum. As one see from the above quote,
combining migrants and seasonality is not only confusing but very often
inaccurate. To those who continue this seasonal terminology, my question
would be, why would emphasis on accuracy be primarily on bird plumage
details and not on their activity relative to season?

Incidentally, I'm much more curious than cranky about this, but arbitrary,
inaccurate usage does kinda set my teeth on edge. Comment welcome.

Michael Price
iSTAR/MIND LINK! Customer Services

(604) 668-5073 vx When I found out that seven of my years
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mprice at mindlink.net I started biting absolutely everything.
michael.price at istar.ca -Max Carlson (Ron Carlson's dog)