Subject: [Tweeters] Re: Aloha ABA
Date: Jan 10 00:26:22 2017
From: John Puschock - g_g_allin at hotmail.com


I imagine that you'll be able to count birds you've seen in Hawaii before it was part of the ABA Area, just as you can count a species that you saw prior to a split. The ABA blog post mentioned previously says you can't count Hawaiian birds immediately, but it goes on to say -- in a somewhat implied manner -- that it's because they haven't worked out what introduced birds will be considered countable. Here's the relevant part:

"Officially the ABA Checklist Committee (CLC), with input from the Hawaiian Bird Records Committee, will address which birds will be included on the ABA Checklist. We expect this process to take a few months, and hopefully no longer than a year. The updated ABA Checklist, including all countable Hawaiian birds, will be included in the next issue of Birder's Guide to Listing & Taxonomy. We estimate that Hawaii will add something on the order of 100-115 species to the ABA Checklist. Of course this doesn't preclude anyone from making provisional estimates now, based on what is likely to be included. All native birds, for instance, are shoe-ins."

The time of a sighting for life listing purposes has only been an issue for introduced species prior to this, so I see no reason to think it will be an issue with Hawaiian birds...unless it involves an introduced species, of course.

John Puschock
Matthews Beach, Seattle