Subject: XATU voting deadline extended
Date: Feb 13 09:18:01 1999
From: Michael Price - mprice at mindlink.bc.ca


Hi Tweets,

Denny Granstrand writes:

>The voting on the countability of the Xantus' Hummingbird has been extended
>until Wednesday, Feb. 17, to allow people who are away from their computers
>for the three-day weekend to vote.

Just so we're clear. This vote is not about countability, except on people's
informal personal lists. The formal vote has already been taken not once but
twice by the duly constituted BC Bird Records Committee. The Xantus's
Hummingbird Hylocharis xantusii was in British Columbia, Canada, and within
that jurisdiction the BC rarities committee has reached a finding that there
was sufficient doubt of the bird's natural origin to preclude its inclusion
to the BC List. If a pattern of sightings emerges, the committee will need
to re-evaluate this initial sighting but at present the bird is on neither
the BC List nor the Canada List compiled by Birders Journal. Formally, this
renders this particular individual uncountable on anything but a personal list.

This adjudicative process is straight out of the book. While, as I said
earlier, I'm a promoter of increased transparency and efficiency in the
workings and accountability of a rarities committee, this current poll,
based as it is on an underlying populist perception of a miscarriage of
process in the decision (ie, that the BC committee was wrong to reject) is
strictly informal and will have no outcome on the bird's official status on
the Canada/BC List. It will remain uncountable until or unless new and
compelling evidence arises to remove the doubt of origin, and such data may
be decades in arriving if it emerges at all.

This flap about the Xhummer is one of those small issues which is the tip of
a larger and much uglier one. I think the most disturbing thing about this
is the underlying attack on the legitimacy of the BC rarities committee. By
voting 'Yes, it's countable', one is essentially saying the BC committee has
no standing in its own province and its decisions carry no force. Imagine if
BC listers were to start a populist campaign to attack and undermine the
jurisdictional authority of the Washington Bird Records Committee over a
similarly unpopular, but perhaps correct, decision.

In similar circumstance, I doubt that the WBRC or any other rarities
committee anywhere would alter or even sanction such a vote on one of its
decisions based on twitchers' emotional need to keep the bird on their
lists. I've never heard of this happening anywhere before, but there's a
first time for everything.

A while back, I expressed reservations about the advisability of a close
relationship between a rarities committee and the listing community, and was
attacked for criticising listers; those reservations become deeper by the
day as this issue and the related one of the independence of rarities
committees, unfolds in the way that it's doing.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.


Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprince at mindlink.net