Unless there is some other mystery bird in Corvallis, the bird in question was
a very out of place Great Gay Owl. I learned of it via Facebook postings.
Had the bird been a Pine Warbler I suspect its presence would have been more
widely broadcast.
Dave Irons
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 12, 2018, at 10:53 AM, Steve Kornfeld
<sbkornfeld@xxxxxxx<mailto:sbkornfeld@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
As suggested I checked on Macaulay. Possibly a Pine Warbler?
Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10
________________________________
From: obol-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:obol-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<obol-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:obol-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> on behalf of
Robert O'Brien <baro@xxxxxxx<mailto:baro@xxxxxxx>>
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2018 10:42:24 AM
To: joel.geier@xxxxxxxx<mailto:joel.geier@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Oregon Birders OnLine
Subject: [obol] Re: ebird throws out the baby with the bath water...
I guess we can now try to guess what the bird species is. Sort of like guessing
the next state bird in Oregon. Maybe it is the next state bird.
Bob O'Brien
On Thursday, January 11, 2018, Joel Geier
<joel.geier@xxxxxxxx<mailto:joel.geier@xxxxxxxx>> wrote:
As luck might have it, another species that comes under this recent
"protection" for sensitive species by eBird was found in Corvallis a few days
ago, after a local resident tipped off a local birder who shared it with
their own personal network of friends.
Sightings of the bird were masked but if you looked at the list of "recent
visits" in Benton County, you'd see that there was suddenly an awful lot of
activity in a neighborhood that seldom gets much attention.
The bird was excluded from all of those ebird lists but still, by my count,
at least 14 birders who were in the loop thanks to personal connections went
to that location to twitch the bird, within the space of 3 or 4 hours.
A long-time local birder who lives on the same street as where this bird was
seen saw another birder walking by, who didn't stop to share this
information, but later posted a photo of the bird on the Macaulay library
(which turns out to be a bit of a loophole in the system).
The bird apparently has not been seen since around 4 pm that afternoon. Hard
to say if the sudden attention by 14+ birders with binoculars and cameras was
the cause, or if it was something else. But if the purpose of the new ebird
"protections" for sensitive species is to protect these species from
excessive attention, apparently that purpose was defeated by word-of-mouth in
this case.
The system might need some work.
--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis