Hi all -
Well, as the person behind all these requests to compile county
lists, I'll toss in my 2 cents.... Can't we just live & let live and
have some fun?

In slightly more wordy terms:

These county year lists that are starting to be compiled are a little
different than individual listing. Despite being someone who really
enjoys the challenge of pursuing my own county lists, it strikes me
that there is a different type of enjoyment to be drawn from trying
to build a list collaboratively - rather than any one person
'winning' with their year list, the idea becomes trying to see what
species are seen by everyone and anyone in a given county.
Nonlisters can participate, and people who may visit a county only
once can still contribute. Mind you, though it takes a lot of the
individual competitiveness out of the process, we can still have some
fun by cheering on our own county [and Doug, look out with your Grant
County list... King is coming through].

Last year, 6 counties participated in this and it was enjoyable to
watch each county find extra species -- even though I wasn't out
there in Spokane or Benton or Walla Walla seeing the birds in person.
This year, the hope is to expand to cover as many counties as
possible.

Is it 'science'? Not really, but I think that if something like this
grows it may form the basis for some useful information down the
road. Just collecting all the 'ticks' for each species seen in each
county may not help that much with learning about birds, but it
doesn't have to stop there. Many of the people who have long been
compiling their own county's list keep track of data on when birds
arrive & leave in their little corner of the state. The fine-grained
data sets might actually have something to say about the bird
population of Washington. Just because it may not amount to much in
the moment doesn't mean this effort can't be a stepping stone to
something more interesting later. In the meantime, it is fun to see
what's out there across the state....

It would be great if we could set up a webpage that made it easy for
people to see what has and hasn't been seen based on these county
lists. I'm still just recruiting people to track various counties, so
I don't know yet where we'll end up. My web skills leave a lot to be
desired, so the web page idea may not materialize.... If we do come
up with something like that, we'll be sure to alert Tweeters.

Nevertheless, I think the objection to this small flurry of county
list postings is a bit hasty -- it is the start of a new year, a time
when new things are just getting sorted out. Of course there are
going to be new topics introduced on a list like this. Of course the
numbers of new birds seen anywhere are going to add up quickly here
at the beginning. My guess is that even if every one of the 39
county lists are compiled, and even if every compiler periodically
posts results to Tweeters [2 big 'if's], the traffic created would
still be pretty minor -- a flurry of new birds and start up
announcements now, another flurry or two around migration times, and
occasional additional updates. Dire predictions about this project
taking over the list strike me as a bit overwraught.

Rather than deciding in advance that a topic should be squelched, why
not give it a chance for a while and see how it actually turns out?
Maybe it will become so overwhelming that the magical 'delete' button
will not be practical - I haven't yet found a topic that has defeated
the 'delete' button, but if that did happen, I'd think that might be
a good time to raise objections about the appropriateness of this or
any other topic. In the interim, maybe a little indulgence would be
appropriate, to allow those of us who want to try something new to
have our fun.

For the record, I believe last year's combined county lists look
something like this:
Benton: 225 species, 72% of their county list
King: 273 species, 73% of their county list
Kitsap: 231 species, 77% of the county list
Skagit: 227 species, 64% of the county list [but we recruited Skagit
late in the year]
Spokane: 247 species, 83% of the county list
Walla Walla: 237 species , 73% of the county list
Washington State as a whole: ~390 species, about 79% of the state list.

Happy New Year, and good birding --

Matt Bartels
Seattle, WA






--