Hi Tweets

Wayne Weber writes:

>This is of interest, because the new BC bird checklist
lists no records at all of Arctic Loon from BC, even though there are
several records for WA.

On the 1988 Ladner CBC south of Vancouver BC, in dead-calm (Beaufort wind
scale 0, sea state 0) waters off the Roberts Bank Jetty, in the presence of
several nearby Pacific Loons *Gavia pacifica*, and a distance of not much
more than 100-150 meters for several minutes, there was a dozing,
odd-looking loon which I tried initially to make into a runty Common Loon *G.
immer, *but which corresponded so entirely to the description of a
Basic-plumaged Arctic Loon *G. arctica* of the Siberian
*viridigularis*race---bright white sides swelling to large and
conspicuous round white
'tail-light' flank-patches, head-shape and longer, larger bill with definite
decurving on distal culmen and keel more reminiscent of Common Loon than the
nearby Pacifics* *with their shorter 'dagger' bills, bill held higher than
horizontal---that when I sent details of the sighting to Terry Walsh, the
author of the landmark *Birding *article on separation of Pacific and Arctic
Loons, (Walsh, T. 1988. Identifying Pacific Loons. Birding 20:12-28.), he
was cautiously encouraging of the identification. The sighting, however, was
not included for adjudication by the Vancouver Rarities Committee (there
being no provincial committee at the time).

The reasons for non-acceptance of this particular sighting were justifiable,
though, especially considering that it could have constituted one of
Canada's first modern records of the species. First, I (and my CBC
count-partner, Karen Wiebe) saw the bird several weeks *before* I saw the
article, so however distinctive the field marks may have been, any
documentation was by necessity, and unacceptably, retroactive. Second, and
though there has been at least one exception since, there was an entirely
reasonable requirement that any First Record for Canada could only be
supported by photographic documentation &/or definitive specimen evidence of
the species' presence or, lacking those, unequivocal multiple-expert
confirmation, none of which was present in this instance. Finally, by the
voting rules then in place on the local rarities committee, a sighting could
only be either accepted or rejected---a 'status pending' or 'of further
interest' category did not exist at the time, so the historical datum which
might have been retained in such a category and later placed into an
emerging context of local and regional wintering and migrational occurrence
was, unfortunately, lost.

Michael Price