At 08:20 PM 2/9/99 -0800, Michael Price wrote:
>But a few brain cells at the back of the head weren't entirely convinced

brain cells can be a dangerous thing :)

[snipping a long list of arguments that the chances that the bird
arrived here naturally are diminishingly small]

>Now I'm becoming a little uneasy about this bird's origin. Let's look at
>something else. Let's assume the bird is a bona fide vagrant, and let's
>assume that because it's a sedentary species, it's gonna sit where it lands,
>so to speak. Well, it remained in the vicinity of one or two yards through
>several seasons where a migrant would have left: it behaved as a
>transplanted sedentary species should. The reasonable inference from that is
>that it couldn't land anywhere else until it reached SW British Columbia,
>thousands of miles north of Baja California.

Why is this a reasonable inference? By definition, we have little knowledge
of how sedentary species act once they're blown out've bed. "reasonable
speculation" ... that's a phrase I could expect. But ... inference? From
what logical base? A lack of knowledge? "Knowing nothing, I make the
following reasonable inference from that null set of knowledge..." Uh...

Sorry, I don't buy it.

> But there were no weather
>systems at the time of sufficent energy to A) transport this bird here while
>preventing it from landing somewhere between Baja and here

"Assuming facts not in evidence", or something like that. We don't know it
didn't land elsewhere. You are presuming it didn't, and then showing it is
unlikely. In other words, a classic strawman argument.

Just because a species is "sedentary" doesn't mean individuals don't move
around. Consider the sendentary northern spotted owl, weird individuals of
which show up in weird places. They don't land in the nearest vacant tree
when looking for a vacant territory during dispersion, they sometimes end
up in urban environments, if I'm to believe posts to tweeters...

Sure, not as far in terms of "klicks", but in terms of habitat differences,
not so much different?

But what seems weird here is that you're interpreting the term "sedentary"
in a very, very literal sense. If the bird sits once, it won't move,
because it is non-migratory. If we stopped calling it "sedentary" and called
it "non-migratory", much of your argument would founder based on this simple
switch in words.

>, B) getting it
>here in a timely way over such a long distance and C) being sufficiently
>energetic to get it here in a short time, but not so energetic that the
>storm kills it. The last two points are vital.

Sounds like an variation of the "hummingbirds migrate on the backs of
geese" answer to the disbelief folks express when faced with the facts
that some members of this order stage impressive migrations. Obviously,
there's nothing in the physiology of hummingbirds, as a taxonomic
entity, that prevents large-distance travel.

>
>Consider the type of bird it is: a hummingbird. One thing stressed in all
>the popular books about hummingbirds, and common knowledge to anyone who
>feeds them, is how frequently they need to rehydrate (that's 'drink', to
>non-ornithologists like ourselves). This is not preference on the birds'
>part: without frequent pitstops to tank up, they die.

Blah blah and yet some species DO migrate long distances, which seemingly
removes the physiological argument.

Behavioral arguments would make more sense (i.e. "they never fly anywhere,
and here's some SOLID DATA backing it up", of course, proving a negative
is very difficult).

>Let's look again at the storm-waif hypothesis.

Again, while this seems unlikely, is it much more unlikely than the illegally
smuggled waif scenario?

I should think one could build some significant arguments against the
likelihood of illegal smuggling of the bird. First, motive - why would
one want to? Then ... after taking the care, preparation, and diligence
to get it to BC ... let it escape? A one of a kind specimen?

I'm sorry, but we're faced with two very unlikely scenarios. I see no
reason to favor the unlikely scenario of human transport over the other
unlikely scenario.

The statistical reality is that the P=1 in this case ... i.e., the
probability of the bird being there was 100%. Somehow it got there.
It's like winning the lottery, it is easy to show statistically that
chances of winning are close to zero, but once you've won ... the
probability are 100% in your favor of you having won.

> To reach SW BC from southern
>Baja in the survival-period of a non-rehydrating hummingbird

So someone diligently feed and watered this bird while motoring,
or flew it up here, or something else, without harming the bird.

Seems like an interesting hypothesis based on absolutely no facts.

Maybe you should try smuggling a hummer yourself to see how easy
it is to do so without getting caught.

Then, though, answer "why"? Where's the motive?

Zoos and reputable private collectors keep records and would've
'fessed up by now.

You are hypothesizing a competent (the bird lived), yet secretive,
private individual. This combination of secretiveness and competence
seems a mystery to me.

And, if you believe it exists, you should be diligently tracking
down the culprit. Such diligence and competence isn't acquired
for the transport of a single southern bird. Whoever did it is
either a wealthy private collector or a smuggler (though I don't
know of any underground pet trade in this species, do you?).

Regardless, rejection by the bird records committee is equivalent
to declaration that high-level, competent smuggling is taking place
and I do trust the committe has followed up to get the gendarmes
interested in tracking this down?

This is, after all, a fairly sophisticated operation and there's
probably a lot of money involved.

Hmmm...if there's money involved, where's the market?

Have you uncovered a market for smuggled hummers?

I realize such markets exist for some bird species.


>Then how could it reach SW BC so very far north? As the species' behavior
>shows, migration or long-distance vagrancy was foreign to it

Which doesn't rule out the mutant brain-fart misguided individual.

Sure, a low probability ... just like the probability of human transport.

Would you care to entertain us with a rough calculation of the relative
probability of these two events, with documentation for the constants
involved in the necessary calculations? :)

Of course ... we don't know the likelihood of such a mutation, nor
of mutant humans transporting it.

All we're faced with is an improbable event which occured with 100%
certainty - the bird was there.

Earlier folks said "God did it" when such events happened. The
records committee, with a certain air of arrogance, hijacks God's
role in the creation of miracles and have stated that "some person(s)
did it". :)

Still, you're arguing in basically the same vein - it could not've
happened naturally, therefore a "miracle" was involved, in this case
the technological ability to transport mass in ways outside the realm
of the natural, non-technological world (pretty much defines a miracle,
for any given reference base of technology).

> its behavior
>at the Pattersons showed it would stay where there was food and water
>regardless of season

Not really. It showed the bird stayed there, nothing more. Given our
lack of knowledge of how this bird behaves when removed from its normal
range, you can't really say anything more.

Statements like this show the danger of pseudo-science...you're arguing
from authority, yet your authority is based on total ignorance of how
THIS species behaves under THESE circumstance. Sorry, doesn't cut it.

>it behaved throughout as a transplanted sedentary
>species

Cool! It's behavior doesn't argue towards any MEANS of transplant.

>not a temporarily-marooned migrant.

Since the species isn't migratory, how the hell could you expect it
to act like a temporarily-marooned migrant?

Such behavior would be unexpected.

It's sedentary behavior is what one would expect - as you argued
earlier in your post. You argue both ends of this observation
for a single conclusion, not ummm...entirely logical or internally
consistent if one were to subject your conclusions to mathematical
analysis.

> So, hurricanes don't work, and
>there was no pattern or other occurrence of similar south Baja sedentary
>endemics in vagrante delicto to the exceedingly well-covered north including
>California and Oregon. So if there is no plausible natural transport
>mechanism, what the heck's left?

Implausible arguments for non-natural transport...

>Artificial transport. Ugly words to a lister, but I'm no longer one and I
>don't care, so I can view and test the possibility with equanimity and what
>I cheerfully hope is neutrality.

And a certain lack of logic...and of course it's fairly well known that
I've NEVER been a lister, so if this is of any consequence I'm pure
white, while you're simply black bleached to off-white :)

> In absence of a convincing natural
>mechanism, an inadvertent or deliberate introduction into BC is the only
>other possibility.

Not at all ...

> The bird might have flown into a wheel-well

Earlier you argued that the high metabolic rate of the hummer argued
against it's coming here naturally, due to its need to rehydrate and
refuel.

Now you postulate a voyage in the wheel-well of an airliner flying
at 35K+ft in altitude?

People try this ... and frequently die of hypothermia and anoxia.
Those that live are invariably in for a stay in hospital, usually
(in the US) a hospital in a confinment scenario, where they're
stabilized and sent home. This is so well known that it is
exceedingly rare to see folks try this means of entry any more.

And we don't die of thirst or lack of food more quickly than hummers.

What is the physiological basis for your argument that hummers are
too fragile to migrate long distances without feeding and watering
far more frequently than humans would need to if walking the same
trip, while arguing that hummers are more able to resist the rigor
of a wheel-well trip?


> or
>baggage-hold of a northbound jet

Baggage holds typically aren't pressurized, either, though it would
be warmer than a wheel well.

Is there a single documented case of a bird being tranported a
couple of thousand miles by accident, undetected, and successfully
establishing itself in either a wheel-well or baggage department?

You've exchanged one unlikely, undocumented form of transport
(natural) for another unlikely, undocumented form of transport
(via accidental human transport).

Document the relevant calculations that led you to believe one
was more likely than the other, please. Keep in mind that humans
are notoriously poor at intuitive judgements in regard to
probability, which is what keeps casinos in business and which
explains why the study of statistics invariably includes non-intuitive
examples like the fact that the likelihood of two folks having the
same birthday in a sample group of 35 is well over 50%...


>or been deliberately and surreptitiously
>kept as a local aviary bird

In this case, the aviary would presumably regret the loss of a bird
which it either paid to bring in, or bought once here, and would
presumably make efforts to recover it...

Wouldn't you? Heck, just go set out your own feeders nearby on
weekdays and mistnet the sucker, and you have your investment
back.

Didn't happen, though, did it? I mean, it was around for MONTHS.

I can't imagine why anyone motivated to bring it here to keep it
would be unmotivated to get it back.

>, or intentionally imported and released, for
>whatever reason (exotic birds would rather frequently show up in Richmond,
>particulary near Vancouver International Airport, YVR, when importers,
>fearing detection, would release their birds and other animals rather than
>be caught red-handed).

For such species there is always a known market. After all, dealers
exist in known markets.

Is there a known market for this species of hummer? Any reason to
believe there's an unknown market?

> But in the absence of a natural mechanism, given this
>species and its sedentary nature, human transport seemed at least as
>possible, if not more so.

Subjective, not objective. I find the notion of human transport
unexplainable, as I simply don't see any motive to do so that doesn't
involve the making or spending of money (smuggling a bird in takes
some money at least), and it would be natural to try and recover it.
After all, customs agents don't look for feeder hummers as being
a hot spot for nailing a smuggler, so recovery once its presence
became known should've been fairly simple.

>Let me stress, Gerrie, that by this point I didn't know which was the more
>plausible, natural or artificial origin for this bird, and that is the
>crucial point: I *didn't* have a reasonable certainty which. At this point
>in my thinking, I realised there was now an equally reasonable doubt that
>the bird arrived here on its own effort, and at this point in the
>deliberations of many a rarity committee member the removal of reasonable
>certainty forces a 'reject' vote (or 'non-acceptance' in the flannelmouthed
>euphemistic Bureauspeak increasingly employed by these committees).

Which seems silly, to me. In absence of a plausible argument for human
transport, it seems far more reasonable to acknowledge that our knowledge
of birds is extremely limited. For many of our species, we can't even
write a credible conservation plan that says anything other than "don't
change a thing without monitoring effects, 'cause our knowledge base
isn't even half-assed, it's more of an ass-hair".

I find it much more easy to believe that a weird individual got funky
and moved up here than to believe perps smuggled the bird into the
country, only to let it go, and only to let it hang out with no effort
at recovery.

Of course, if they let it hang out with no effort at recovery, this
indicates it wasn't worth much.

Hmmm...not worth much...then why was it smuggled in the first place?

People rarely smuggle dirt (I know one friend who does, collecting
a "dirts of the world" archive). People much more frequently smuggle
drugs, expensive CITES items dead or alive, currency to launder, that
kind of thing. So ... show me the money, then I'll be more interested
in the human-movement theory.


>To remove that doubt, I tried to think of any way that it could be proven
>either way: if natural, how to pick up a single stay-at-home hummingbird
>from southern Baja California and not let it make a landfall

False premise - the fact that it's "sedentary" doesn't mean if it makes
a single landfall it won't move. Perhaps it made landfall in a San
Francisco fog, or in the mojave where no feeders were available. It's
not so hard to imagine landfalls that wouldn't appear attractive.

You claim that any landfall would lead to its staying put...this is
a tautalogy, for after all it was living on land before it left, and
if you're statement's true it would still be home...


> until it
>reached the Patterson's yard thousands of miles to the north in one jump

Again, the "one jump" premise is a false premise. While it may be true,
it is mere speculation unbacked by data and apparently adopted by your
belief that "sedentary" means something much more strigent than
"non-migratory". Sedentary species have post-breeding dispersals,
they don't just sit on their butts sucking the same flower their
whole life...


>without killing it and without bringing any of its Baja buddies along.

If single birds are an indication of human transport, just how many
rare birds would be tossed out? The blackburnian warbler I saw at
Malheur had no blackburnian buddies along. Neither did the
prothonatory. The red-shoulders we see at Ferguson springs, apparently
breeding, are a unique island several hundreds of miles from the
nearest breeding neighbors, and they didn't bring their cousins
and siblings along, apparently.

This statement of yours just seems silly. If rarities must appear
in flocks in order to be legitimate, go rewrite the books!

>If
>artificial, how, and if deliberate, why? Was an illegal aviary in the
>vicinity? Was someone importing hummingbirds illegally?

Any evidence of other hummer smuggling? Have you notified the authorities
that apparently hummer smuggling's going on?

> Was the bird an
>escape or a deliberate release? I even considered the possibility that the
>bird could have been deliberately released as a 'salted' rarity by an
>unscrupulous lister, as in the famous English 'Hastings Rarities' case of
>the earlier part of the century.

In that case, just let the record stand. Cheating and records based on
cheating have a fine tradition in sport, along with mistakes made by
officials and referees.

> I tried to think of *all* the
>possibilities, both natural and artificial. The answer to them all was: I
>don't know;

Apply Occam's razor - the simplest explanation is that the bird arrived
here naturally by a fluke. Improbable arrivals happen all the time.
This one is excessively improbable, but given how frequently we find
highly improbably misplaced birds, excessively improbable sitings are
a certainty at some interval. The calculation of that interval seems
to be pretty difficult, but we know it's finite.

Your entire argument is known as an "argument of incredubility". The
world of science is littered with folks who've fallen on that sword.

>nothing I can think of can dismiss the other possibilities

You can't dismiss human intervention entirely, not for ANY rare bird
siting.

>there is no compelling piece of evidence either way. Reasonable doubt.

I would think bird records comittees operate more along the civil
suit model than the criminal conviction model...

Preponderance of evidence, in other words.

Your entire argument boils down to a simple statement - you can't
believe the bird got here naturally, so you reject it. Absent any
evidence to the contrary. This is not even "reasonable doubt" in
the legal sense. "reasonable doubt" must be based on EVIDENCE, and
the only evidence available is that the bird got to BC. That's all
you have to work on. Your "reasonable doubt" is based on pure
speculation, and if you don't mind my saying so, speculation based
on rather specious logic in at least a few cases.

> Can't
>accept. Reject, then. The rules say it's gotta be one or the other, and ya
>can't duck a decision.

At a very, very deep level this entire argument on your part
explains why I:

1) could care less about bird records committees

- and -

2) don't bother submitting sightings to them.

I just shoot the results, put them in my file, and sell 'em if
I have the chance without any reference to the rarity of them
being found in such a place :)

>But in the second round, the
>storm-waif hypothesis was again invoked, again without detailed application
>of how it would work with this particular bird.

Of course, for the vast majority of species we don't have sufficient
knowledge to make "detailed applications" of this hypothesis.

Better toss out that rarities book at start over! How many vagrants
have been accepted without any objective information on how a storm-waif
hypothesis affects that species? You reject the hypothesis based on
subjective analysis, not experimental data. Other species are accepted
based on the same lack of data. There should be consistency...i.e.,
unless the bird's radar tracked from site A to site B it can't be
accepted. Something like that. Recovered bands (oops, this is
supposed to be for "life lists", not "death lists", oh well)...

>To steal something from somewhere (has the flavor of the Holmesian canon),
>extraordinary sightings require extraordinary proof.

Actually, Holmes said something that implies quite the obvious.
More along the lines that if you're faced with a known fact, and
have proven that all explanations but one can not account for
that fact, then you MUST accept the one explanation as being
truth, NO MATTER HOW IMPROBABLE IT SEEMS. In other words, no
extraordinary proof is necessary to prove an extraordinary
fact, only elimination of all other possibilities. This is a
keen insight, and you've done much harm to Conan Doyle's
reputation by publicizing your misunderstanding.

We're talking Sherlock, not Oliver Wendell, I presume?

He says nothing in this canon about choosing between two
highly improbable explanations...


> Such proof wasn't there
>nor was it provided in the entire time the bird was there, except to show
>the bird behaved as a good little sedentary species should

You mean all sedentary species spend their entire life at a single
feeder?


>Disturbingly, in his weekly Birds column in the Globe and Mail on Saturday,
>Peter Whelan mentioned the fact that when the Xhummer was first seen, people
>noted a small injury on its nape. One of the situations I have seen this
>superficial injury/nape-feather disturbance before was on birds which have
>attempted to remove their heads from a mist-net's mesh so forcibly that such
>damage occurs where the net-strands 'hook' the nape feathers. The
>injury/displacement could as easily have had a natural cause, but such an
>observation deepened my uncertainty of the bird's origin.

God, you grasp at straws.




- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
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