Hi Tweets,

Kas Dumroese writes:

>I agree with the thread that's it's not really my job to screen
>reports, but I still do it occasionally. If it's really far-fetched (9
>Yellow-crowned Night-herons at Medicine Lake),I'll give the observer
>a call.

Kas, I'd suggest that a certain amount of screening is necessary if only to
know whether to call it a definitively-ID'ed bird, a possible, a probable,
and so on on the really hot species, if only to let people know the degree
of solidity to a particular sighting.

>I put the observer(s) name(s) in the RBA for two reasons: 1)
>it passes the buck, so to speak, and 2) if it's a really rare
>sighting, reported by a very credible birder, that lends support to
>the validity of the sighting. You may argue that conversely, a
>mega-rarity reported by a novice could be ignored due to lack of
>credibility; perhaps, but you miss out if they're right!
>As for
>spooking off the novices, I don't really think it's a problem.

Personal experience here forces me to differ with you on this point, Kas.
The confidence levels in not all but many if not most beginners is low
enough that it takes remarkably little discouragement or frustration either
to drive them into 'lone wolf' birding, of which this city has a large
number, or to leave birding for something else entirely. During my tenure as
operator of the Vancouver BC RBA, so many new and middlin' birders
complained of local elitism and exclusion that I made it a point to make it
easy for them to report stuff and would spend long periods on the phone with
them going through ID recognition techniques and ID pitfalls that in a less
status-driven and more sharing environment they would have learned in the field.

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)