Tweets,
Keith wrote "I have had multiple Code 4 and 5 birds at my feeder... I see feeders all over town locally... why would I be so special?"

Off the top of my memory, I can't remember what all Keith has reported from his feeder, so would ask are these county code 4 and 5 or state code 4 and 5? While the county lists are helpful, I wouldn't take those codes too seriously as sometimes its been a while since a county was updated or a birds status wasn't well understood at the time of the checklist. A classic example of this is greater-white fronted goose for Kittitas is a code 4 bird, yet most years I hear of multiple records in migration and when doing my thesis work in the Quilomene some yeas ago had them over a dozen mornings flying over during 2 springs, not exactly a "rare" bird.

That's a small side point though, Keith raises an excellent question on rarities in terms of coverage. My basic answer and doubt I'd get too much argument is that percentage of rarities found is highly correlated with how often its covered by people looking for vagrants. A case of this is the Washtucna, Lyons Ferry in early fall migration example. A series of birders in WA have well established a trend that vagrants show up in Washtucna, Lyons ferry and the surrounding vagrant traps in early September and thus many people including western WA people descend on the spot every year and scour those spots on multiple days for vagrants. The percentage here in early September of vagrants found vs. vagrants occurring is likely much higher than 1-3% as many mornings multiple people are searching, especially once the first vagrant report of the season has peaked interest. Its the classic patagonia picnic table effect. However, lets take an obscure spring near the Wild Horse Wind Farm in eastern Kittitas County... many years ago Brenda Senturia while doing breeding bird atlas work discovered an Ovenbird here one morning. Do we really believe that's an isolated case? And how many of these spots are never checked and are on private land and can't be checked? Lots! So for the whole area, yes David Sibley and Keith are in my opinion exactly correct that a small percentage of vagrants are the ones that are actually found and reported. For known vagrant traps like Cape May nationally and places like Washtucna in our little neck of the woods or Ocean Shores for shorebirds, I would venture that the percentage goes up exponentially and possibly on certain weeks comes close to 50% or so in areas like Washtucna in early September.

Just my two cents.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA