Subject: [Tweeters] Verdin thoughts
Date: Apr 4 22:29:36 2010
From: Hans-Joachim Feddern - thefedderns at gmail.com


Hi All!

I do agree with Jesse, that there is no way of telling if there was an
"assist". This possibility cannot be ruled out, maybe by long haul trucker?
It is less likely though with a Verdin, then with migratory species showing
up as vagrants on the other side of the Atlantic or Pacific, delivered as
shipboard passengers. Even here it cannot be ruled out, that the great
number of North American species showing up in Britain in the Fall, after
major storms, where not windblown! Personally, I am still hoping to see a
Northern Lapwing in North America. It does not matter, whether it arrived by
freighter, cruise ship or favorable winds! It happens to be one of my
favorite birds from my childhood days in Germany.
A perfect example of a windblown vagrant, was the female Magnificent
Frigatebird, which I was the first one to see in Colorado back in 1985. The
records committee did not believe me, until the frozen carcass was turned in
a couple of weeks later, after attacking a windsurfer on a reservoir. It was
hit by a rock, winged and had its neck twisted. This bizarre story hit both
the Denver Post and the now defunct Rocky Mountain News. This happened just
2 or 3 days after a major hurricane in Baja California, that the by now
starving bird found itself east of the Rockies.
A good example of shipboard migratory birds, I experienced aboard a U.S.
Navy troop ship I was on as a young trooper between Brooklyn and
Bremerhaven, Germany in the fall many years ago. The first couple of days of
the East Coast we had numerous exhausted land birds resting on the ship,
such as kinglets, redwings, warblers and even a woodcock. On the third day
out, the large white bird on top of the main mast, turned out not to be a
gull, but a Snowy Owl!! So why not a Verdin in Washington?

Good Birding!

Hans Feddern
Twin Lakes/Federal Way, WA.
thefedderns at gmail.com

On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 8:21 PM, Jesse Ellis <calocitta8 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey all-
>
> I just caught on to this issue, and I want to weigh in a little. First off,
> I find it unfortunate that we birders sometimes respond to rarities by
> saying "impossible" and invoking human intervention. In my opinion, this
> should require just as much proof of likelihood as any other mechanism -
> that is to say a demonstration that this has happened to verdins before.
> Otherwise we're in trouble, because dangit, any rarity could be assisted.
> There's no test, absolutely no way you'd be able to tell the difference, and
> you run the risk of throwing the baby out the third-story window with the
> bathwater. The prior vagrancy patterns of a species, or especially LACK
> thereof, cannot be used to determine if a species was assisted, because the
> logic is circular. You would never have any accepted records of vagrancy
> anywhere, because you'd never be able to establish any pattern of vagrancy,
> because you'd be ignoring real events. Once a bird is out of its range, esp.
> a sedentary species, anything could happen, no? There's nothing, no
> migratory instinct, to guide it back. It may take one funny little twist in
> that bird's brain to send it spiraling to WA.
>
> Jesse Ellis (former of Seattle)
>
>
>
> --
> Jesse Ellis
> Madison, Dane Co, WI
>
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>
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