>However, one "feature" of my non-expertness is that I often
>have imprecise ID's for birds. I don't want to have to keep
>records in different places, expecially for trips, but what
>does one do with ID's that amount to: "some kind of flycatcher";
>Possible Say's Phoebe; an accipiter; or a sparrow with this and
>that and this on it; or even 90% sure that's a whatzit.
>
>I don't really want to ignore these vaguely ID'd birds, since
>I did "see" them, but they also don't fit into high-precision
>databases, either. Is the politically correct thing to do to
>just ignore these observations? There are still parts of the
>observation that may help in the future, say the time of year,
>location, type of bird, etc, and maybe I'll know better what it
>was sometime down the line. When one goes out on a multi-
>day birding trip, even the vague ones are part of the excitement.
>And for that matter, so are the non-bird animals.
>

>Thanks.
>
>Bob Mauritsen
>bluetooth at csi.com

Bob,

If you keep a list of every time you go birding, you can enter the
unidentified birds as: gull sp., empidonax sp., sparrow sp., etc. If you
are just keeping life, state and county lists I don't think there is a place
for those types of sightings. They just have to go down as unfortunate misses.

Many of the listing software programs can accomodate daily trips. I have
both AVIS and Birder's Diary (which I haven't started using yet) but I can't
think of how a missed ID can fit into a life-type list.

Denny Granstrand
Yakima. WA