Hi Tweets,

I received this from Bill Smith, a very experienced birder from Florida who
was up here last week.

> I see that Tweeters is agog over a Crested Caracara in or near the
>Makah Indian Res. That reminded me of two birds I saw 20-30 years ago in
>the northeast. One still had jesses, the other patrolled someone's
>outdoor grill and snatched steaks off the barbie! When we looked into the
>situation, we found that the species (at least then) was very common in
>private captivity. It was (then) often foisted off onto neophyte
>falconers (after all, it IS a falcon), who soon got tired of the species'
>lack of hunting instinct and let them go. I'll bet that if someone made
>discreet inquiries among the local Indians, the source of that bird could
>be discovered; after all, it is a symbol among native peoples in Mexico
>and perhaps elsewhere.
>
> Feel free to pass the preceding paragraph along if you think it
>may do good.

The record will of course be accepted as a Crested Caracara by the WBRC,
but I'm sure there will be spirited discussion about the probability of its
being an escaped (or released) captive. Such committees in most states now
have to make those judgments routinely.

There's a Red-crested Pochard in Tacoma. Wild bird? Probably not. We're so
far out of the range of this eastern European/western Asian species, which
doesn't migrate to particularly high latitudes, that it just doesn't seem
likely for a wild one to get here on its own. On the other hand, this is a
species that's commonly kept in captivity.

There's a Xantus' Hummingbird in BC. Wild bird? I guess many hundreds of
people are making that assumption (or maybe not, in some cases)! It's not
kept in captivity as far as we know, yet the science/art of keeping
hummingbirds alive and healthy in captivity is quite well developed. What's
the probability of it reaching here on its own? What's the probability that
someone in that area had been keeping one in captivity, or brought it back
in a suitcase from a recent trip to Baja? Even if one probability is higher
than the other, they're only probabilities, not facts.

One question the bird record commitee will have to ask is how much evidence
there is that *resident* subtropical birds are likely to wander a few
thousand kilometers farther away from the equator in the course of their
daily movements. We're overdue for a compilation of such occurrences.

Who knows? Maybe in 100 years, there will be 10 records each of the
caracara and the hummingbird from the NW.

Have a good weekend, birdy or not!

Dennis

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html