[va_co_birding] Re: potential web page format

I tend to agree with Mike about the list thing.  To me, I'm not running to 
the county listing website to learn about bird distribution for that county.  
I'd contact someone who has a lot of birds in that county if I needed to know 
something about it.  The listing aspect of birding doesn't offer me a whole lot 
in terms of the distribution.  Even a year is pretty meaningless.  If a bird 
used to occur in a county and no longer does, it would still be possible for 
someone to find that species (a vagrant, overshoot, whatever), and list it as 
2004.  If I find a Bewick's Wren in Fauquier, it changes nothing about the 
distribution; the bird is out of place.
To me a roster of birds seen is all I'm looking for from a county listing 
page.  I think that the dream to have online county lists for all the counties 
is 
far more valuable, and far more interesting, but the two have nothing to do 
with one another, nor do I think a composite of every birder's county list for 
a county can come close to giving that information, regardless to what is 
included in it.  

One bone to pick regarding the Texas site is that groups don't count.  I 
don't know how or why they came to this conclusion in Texas, but it is folly to 
do 
so.  This would rule out the counting of the majority of selasphorus 
hummingbirds found in Virginia.  Most of these birds are not identified in the 
field, 
but identified by banders later.  Since I won't let someone else ID a bird for 
me, I'd be unable to count these things.  It could also lead to sloppy 
birding.  I've got Plegadis sp. on my Fauquier County list, and almost 
certainly the 
four birds I saw flying that day were Glossies, but why force myself to an 
ID?  I'm certainly not going to leave them off my list either.  The list of 
examples goes on and on.  

tmd

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Todd Michael Day
Jeffersonton, Virginia, USA
Culpeper County
BlkVulture@xxxxxxx
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