Subject: [Tweeters] Washington Bird Records Committee recent decisions
Date: Jul 13 10:51:43 2013
From: Matt Bartels - mattxyz at earthlink.net


Hi Tweeters and Inland NW Birders -

Last week, the Washington Bird Records Committee [WBRC] completed review of its Spring 2013 'interim' packet.

The WBRC normally meets annually in October, but often also circulates an ?interim? packet half way between meetings. This allows the committee to process a number of reports where it is relatively easy to reach consensus without discussion. Because the committee does not meet in person to discuss these reports, a greater level of voting consensus is required to ?accept? or ?not accept? a report. Many reports will be carried over until the October meeting for final deliberations. 69 received seven 'yes' votes, and are thus passed w/o need for further discussion. 13 received four or more 'no' votes, and are thus not accepted. 26 reports were deferred for more consideration at the next meeting.

A large portion of the reports considered this time came from a review of numerous records of Horned Puffin documented by the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST). Volunteers documented beached Horned Puffins, particularly from 2007 and 2012, and the committee reviewed 40 of those reports in this packet (36 accepted, 4 deferred).

No new species were added to the state list with this packet, so the state list remains at 505 species.

The results of this round's votes can be found at the following link on the WOS website: http://wos.org/wbrcspring2013.html

The official state list and the list of 'review species' are available here:
State checklist: http://wos.org/checklist2012.html
Review List: http://wos.org/reviewlist.html

The committee continues to depend on submissions from the community, and I'd urge you to submit reports for rarities on the review list when you observe them. A form for submitting reports can be found at: http://wos.org/rarebird_exported/rarebird/rarebird.html

I welcome any questions about the status of past decisions or any new report submissions,

Matt Bartels
Secretary, WBRC
Seattle, WA