Fantasy and overstatement ("In some magic way, you are a member of the
rarities committee of each location...") do not help Michael Price's
arguments. Wrentit, Yellow-billed Magpie, and Island Scrub-Jay (not
"Catalina Island Scrub Jay") all show less evidence of vagrancy than does
Xantus' Hummingbird. (Remember, there are two accepted records from
California, hundreds of miles north of the species' normal range.) Although
Xantus' does appear do be non-migratory, it is a hummingbird, and
hummingbirds in general are known for long-distance vagrancy. Anna's
Hummingbird is totally non-migratory, but there are dozens of records
hundreds of miles from its normal range. (At this point, I would say
"normal" stops at about Campbell River, B.C.) Costa's Hummingbird, which is
at most a short-distance migrant, has occurred far north of its normal range
in B.C. (at least 6 or 7 records), Washington, and Oregon (lots of records).
In many cases (certainly not all!) vagrant individuals of these species were
immatures, as was the Xantus' Hummingbird in Gibsons.

Would Michael turn thumbs down on the Curve-billed Thrasher now in Barrhead,
Alberta, because the species is "non-migratory" and with no other records
north of South Dakota? Would he turf the records of Painted Redstart in
B.C., Ontario, Massachusetts, and elsewhere, which have been widely accepted
by the ornithological community, because the species supposedly is only
slightly migratory?

The first B.C. record of Costa's Hummingbird in 1972 was viewed with
skepticism by many at the time (for example, it was ridiculed in print by
A.O.U. Check-list Committee member Allan Phillips) because it was then by
far the northernmost record of the species. Now, it fits in as part of a
well-documented dispersal pattern. Perhaps, in 30 years, there will be 10 or
more U.S. records of Xantus' Hummingbird, and the B.C. record will look for
less unlikely in that light.

If we are making comparisons with other species, we may as well get our
facts straight. Wrentits get well north of "southern Oregon", and are common
in Astoria; in southern Oregon and California, they occur far inland, and
are not confined to a "narrow strip". Also, there is no such species as a
"Catalina Island Scrub Jay". The Island Scrub-Jay is found only on Santa
Cruz Island, and has never been recorded on Santa Catalina.

I agree with the position of Don Baccus: the application of the principle of
Occam's razor (the simplest explanation is the one most likely to be true)
suggests strongly to me that the Xantus' Hummer in Gibsons was most likely
an unassisted vagrant from Baja California.
The bird was not seen in Gibsons until November. It could easily have (and
probably did) wander north gradually over a period of 2-3 months, and
especially if it stayed away from the coast, it could easily have escaped
all those sharp-eyed California birders. (You're right about that, Sherry.)

Michael's viewpoint on the Xantus' is well-known now, as is mine. Perhaps we
should change the subject before everyone becomes totally fed up with it, or
let others carry on the debate.

Wayne C. Weber
114-525 Dalgleish Drive
Kamloops, B.C. V2C 6E4
(250) 377-8865
Wayne_Weber at bc.sympatico.ca



-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Price <mprice at mindlink.bc.ca>
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Date: Friday, February 12, 1999 1:08 AM
Subject: Re: Xantus' Hummer


>Hi Tweets,
>
>Sherry Hagen writes:
>
>>Some seem to assume that if this bird, the Xantus hummingbird came up the
>>coast somehow or another that someone would have seen it. I ask why? We
all
>>know that ALL birds are not seen ALL the time by someone. It seems funny
that
>>a bird like the Brambling can show up in Portland and no one has reported
it
>>along its path from where it came from. Is there not a chance that this
bird,
>>the Xantus came up with say, a rufous hummingbird or such. It could have
been
>>in Alaska all summer and no one saw it til it tried to follow the rufous
and
>>stopped in Gibson's. Just my two cents and it's free.
>
>A Wrentit is visiting a suet feeder at Sag Harbor, Maine; if accepted, it
>will be a first record away from a narrow strip of California and southern
>Oregon.
>
>A Californian endemic, a Yellow-billed Magpie, is seen and photographed
>picking over discarded offal near a meat-packing plant beside Hudson's Bay
>in northern Quebec.
>
>A Catalina Island Scrub Jay appears with Blue Jays on a feeding table just
>outside Savannah, Georgia. There are no known records of this species away
>from Catalina Island off the California Coast.
>
>In some magic way, you are a member of the rarities committee of each
>location. Each committee's constitution is written in such a way as to deny
>you the luxuries of either an 'abstain' option or a 'pending further
>verification' category. One small mercy is tossed to you like a small bone
>to a miserable dog: the magpie is not entirely sedentary; it shows a little
>evidence of vagrancy at the northern edge of its range; the other two,
>though....
>
>The rest of the committee, and the birding community in each location,
await
>your decision on whether you will accept or reject their inclusions to the
>State or Provincial Lists and your reasons for doing so.
>
>As far as the Brambling is concerned, allow me to repeat Don Cecile's
recent
>remarks: there are known patterns of movements, timing, and distribution
for
>this and many other known-migrant rarities. What about a Brambling in
summer
>in Canada or the Lower 48, though? That would be a new record, but in
>winter, they typically show up when Arctic jet-streams impel powerful
>intrusions of Siberian arctic air into the Yukon and Alaska. They seem to
>move south just ahead of or with the cold fronts as the edges of the frigid
>air mass sweep south and west over the continent. There is a known pattern
>and the sightings fit that pattern. So far.
>
>Still, birds got wings: theoretically, they could appear anywhere. As
Sherry
>observes, they could, but observation shows that many of them don't or do
>only under constrained conditions. Pattern and context are a help in
>figuring out what they actually do as opposed to what they could do if they
>felt like it. The fun is trying to figure all this stuff out!
>
>Michael Price
>Vancouver BC Canada
>mprice at mindlink.net
>