What do others think of this idea? If you have your lists in digital form,
it is probably easy to pull out your totals for the East and West side of
the state. If your data is on paper, it may be more work to come up with
these numbers.
It's not a lot of work to add two lines to the data submission form or to
compile a couple more numbers from those who want to report these totals.
Paul Sullivan
Listing compiler
From: Wayne Weber [mailto:contopus@xxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2015 4:12 PM
To: OBOL2 <obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: PAUL SULLIVAN <paultsullivan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Proposal for 2 new listing categories for OBA lists
Oregon Birders,
I would like to propose a couple of new listing categories for the listing
stats section in OREGON BIRDS. I have suggested this privately at least
twice over the last 15 years or so to 2 different list administrators, but
have not had a positive response, so I'm putting it out in public to see
what kind of response there is.
The new listing categories I'm suggesting would be "Western Oregon" (e.g.,
all counties west of the Cascade crest) and "Eastern Oregon" (all counties
east of the Cascade crest), with 18 counties in each region. I have long
felt that birders living east of the Cascades are at a disadvantage in
building a big state list, because many species are found only in coastal
regions, and a disproportionate share of rarities are also found west of the
Cascades (if only because there are more birders there looking for them).
Having a new "Eastern Oregon" category would allow us to see who are the top
listers in this generally under-birded area- it may be somewhat different
from the top statewide listers!
In Washington, the newsletter (and now the website) WASHINGTON BIRDER (which
can be seen at www.wabirder.com <http://www.wabirder.com> ) has had
separate list categories for many years for Western Washington and Eastern
Washington, and I think it would make sense to do the same for Oregon.
I had planned to make this suggestion on OBOL some time ago, but events in
the last month postponed my posting. I realize that even if approved, it may
be too late to implement a new set of listing areas for 2015 lists (which
need to be sent in early in 2016), but I hope it could be implemented in
time for 2016 lists.
And in case anyone cares, my lifetime lists are 259 for Eastern Oregon, 307
for Western Oregon, and 366 statewide. (I don't keep year lists, although I
know many of you do.) I have a few fairly easy potential additions left,
especially in Eastern Oregon, but after that it will start to get a lot
harder.
Happy New Year, everyone, and I will be interested to see if there is much
support for my suggestion.
Good luck and good birding,
Wayne C. Weber
Delta, BC
contopus@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:contopus@xxxxxxxxx>
