Subject: Great Backyard (Rare) Bird Count
Date: Feb 21 19:58:44 2001
From: Netta Smith - nettasmith at home.com


Hello tweets.

After having read quite a few posts on the recently carried out Great
Backyard Bird Count (GBBC), and in particular one posting, I have to add my
2 cents.

Elizabeth Noyes wrote: "I was looking at the results of the GBBC and saw
that nobody reported the Great-tailed Grackle or Northern Hawk Owl. There
was also no Snowy Owls reported. If anyone saw them Friday the 16th through
Monday the 19th please be sure to report them at:
http://132.236.201.29/gbbc/toc_page.html"

This paragraph is an appropriate one to underscore a whole bunch of posts on
the subject that discussed hummingbird sightings that were very unlikely
(not to mention Wrentits in Washington). Parenthetically, when I entered my
backyard count, species such as Wrentits weren't on the list and would have
had to be a "write-in," and the form specifically said that write-ins
wouldn't appear in the tally. So did someone click on Oregon (which would
have listed Wrentit in the main list) and then send in a Washington count?

Elizabeth's statement implies that she thought that *every species* of bird
in the area should go on the GBBC, when in fact the whole purpose of the
count is to record the *common* birds of each region, so changes in their
numbers can be monitored. This in turn leads me to hop onto a soapbox that
I've stayed off for quite a while. I don't know Elizabeth and don't know
the extent of her experience as a birder, but I wonder if she hasn't been
misled by the birding community as a whole to think that birding and
bird-counting are all about rarities.

I do realize that much of the attraction of birding to many people is the
fun of the chase (and chases usually involve rarities - who has to "chase" a
Song Sparrow?), but I beg all of you to sit back and contemplate the fact
that *bird counting* is *not* for rarities, it is to document populations.
Great-tailed Grackles and No. Hawk Owls don't have populations in Washington
and are thus quite inconsequential in this particular context. I am in fact
a wee bit horrified to think that someone might go to Stanwood to do a GBBC
just to add the Great-tailed Grackle to that list posted from the state
("yay, we beat out Oregon by one species.").

But birding has come to this. The Christmas Bird Counts, first started to
do the same thing (record population changes in common birds), have become
extremely competitive, with a lot of energy put into finding as many rare
species as possible to get that species list up. I can't help but think
this could be at the expense of carefully counting common birds. I don't
speak theoretically. I went on the Cocoa, Florida, count waaayyy back in
the 50s when I lived in Florida, and the compiler made no bones of wanting
us to go out and find every species we could so that count would keep its #1
position in species tallied. It *was* at the expense of counting the birds,
and I would say CBCs have only become more competitive since then.

Elizabeth, please don't take this personally. I'm not criticizing you at
all, just the milieu in which all birders exist, which I think has been not
a little perverted by the over-riding emphasis on the rare at the expense of
the commonplace.

I check tweeters only every week or so, so if anyone would like to take
issue with my conclusions (or attitude), please send a copy to me as well as
tweeters. Thanks.

Dennis Paulson
--
Netta Smith and Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115