[texbirds] Re: Reporting rare birds on Texbirds
- From: "Glenn Swartz" <gdswartz@xxxxxxxx>
- To: texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2013 07:19:20 -0600 (CST)
I have chased a few local rare bird in my earlier years. At first when a rare
bird show up, not many birders knew about it. This was back before the internet
age.
When the Collared Forrest- Falcon showed up at Bentsen State Park back in the
90s (first US sighting), I went down when a group of four to see the bird.
We got there at 8 am. The park was already swarming with birders, hundreds of
us.
The word was for that day that nobody had seen the bird. At one point we were
standing out side the front gate on the dike talking to a friend we run into
about 2 that afternoon.
Word got out that the Falcon was seen back inside the park and a frantic mob of
people made a run, yes they were running, to go see the bird and were coming
right at us.
The friend we where talking to was a police officer and was well over six foot
tall and even he had a look of concern on his face.
This event put an end to my âchasingâ rare birds. We as birders should show
more respect for our hobby.
Yes, a few of the die hards saw the falcon at sun set that day.
I also run the Costal Bend Rare Bird Alert for a couple of years and have all
kinds of stories about birders making demands.
Our home was always open to birders and we had hundreds of people come by to
see birds at our feeders. We even had bird tours show up by the bus loads. For
the most part, the people were polite and thankful. But a few were not. One guy
walked in and flopped down on the couch and demanded coffee. One big year bird
chaser with in minutes of coming inside asked where the Buff-bellied
Hummingbird (back then it was a hard bird to find outside the Valley) was. The
whole time the hummer was feeding at the feeder. He didnât even know how to
id the birds he was looking for.
I could go on and on. Birders are people and people are all different. The
computer age has change bird watching and bird chasing.
Glenn Swartz
-----Original Message-----
From: MBB22222@xxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 9:23pm
To: texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [texbirds] Reporting rare birds on Texbirds
Recently a few thoughts on this subject were posted here. I do not reply to
anybody in particular; these are just my own, loose, thoughts. Nor I try
to criticize any thoughts posted earlier. We all have rights to our own
opinion.
First, in my opinion, reporting any bird here, or somewhere else, is a
courtesy of the poster. Second, If somebody thinks that something is important
it should do it itself; personally rare birds list with location posted on
the same day when they have been seen is absolutely not important to me but
knowing that this might be of interest to some people I do sometimes post
if I saw one in popular place and I do not if I think they are in sensitive
area where this or other birds' welfare can be compromised. What I think
is 'sensitive\' it might not be to somebody else but my opinion is as valid
as others. I wouldn't question their definitions. It is all relative. I
understand that we have a few people calling themselves hard core birders and
it seems like those, sometimes, are demanding that other people
immediately post any interesting finding so they can go and have a tick.
Personally I
do not see much satisfaction from chasing birds found by somebody else and
claim it on the 'list'. It also seems that the tactic of trying to make
somebody feel guilty if he/her is not immediately sending the report can be
used from time to time as well. BTW, it looks like somebody with a lot of
money, private jet and horde of local guides could quite easy win big year or
whatever it is called. To some degree this was already been done in the
past. On the other hand, sure, I am checking eBirds to check migration dates
(of common birds), etc. I would be much more grateful to people who only
post county were it was seen but correctly IDed the bird. Unfortunately
eBirds is just a mess as far as this goes. And yes, forums were birds and ID
subjects were discussed in deep are practically gone. Not very good for all
new bird watchers. And, I think these discussions are more important than
posting rarities. Some people did not have time to learn ID birds yet but will
jump plane to tick one that was found, and IDed, by somebody else (not
always IDed correctly as we know of quite a few wild goose chases in the past
- sure it is good for local economy ....).
To me the bottom line is: if one is seriously interested in any bird
groups it has to learn how to ID them himself (or end up with 5 or more
different names for one bird if choose to keep asking for help) and learn how
to
find birds by himself (or keep checking on messages and have his car engine
running all the time to jump in when rarity is posted).
Mark B Bartosik
Houston, Texas
_http://www.pbase.com/mbb/from_the_field_
(http://www.pbase.com/mbb/from_the_field)
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Glenn
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