Dear Christine and Tweeters,

I am sorry Christine found it difficult to access the BirdBox. The
chickadee question is designed to protect the BirdBox from nuisance
calls. Believe it or not, rare bird alerts such as the BirdBox are
sometimes plagued by prank callers who tie up the system with nonsense. I
can't imagine why they would want to do this, but they do. I think the
vast majority of the people that use the BrdBox could be described as
"listers", who either already know how many chickadee species we have in
Washington, or are motivated enough to look it up. The question is NOT
designed as some sort of elitist test to exclude other types of birders,
but, unfortunately, may make it harder for them. People who do have
trouble are always welcome to contact me (and often do), either in my
mailbox on the BirdBox (no chickadees required) or at my home phone number.

By the way, we have four species of chickadee in Washington: Black-capped,
Chestnut-backed, Mountain, and Boreal.

Rachel Lawson
BirdBox System Administrator


>"When I called the Birdbox to report the falcon, I was required to
>answer how many species of chickadees there are in the state before I could
>even report this bird. I'm sure many of you are rolling your eyes at
>finding such a simple question offensive, but it wasn't necessary to know
>this to be able to identify this bird as an arctic falcon. I hung up in
>disgust and simply sent them an e-mail."

>Christine
>Everett