PS - " rule 4 says "diagnostic field marks, sufficient to ID to species, must have been seen and/or heard and/or documented at the time of the encounter" I think that a key term here is "at the time of the encounter" - to encounter something means to see it face to face - so if you are not looking at that bird, and trying to ID the bird, there is no encounter for the purposes of rule 4. You did not encounter the bird that you saw in the photo after the fact for purposes of the rule. Make sense? John Romano Madison Wis --- On Wed, 4/20/11, john romano <cajunbirder@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: From: john romano <cajunbirder@xxxxxxxxx> Subject: [wisb] Re: Counting after the fact birds To: wisbirdn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, jerry937975@xxxxxxx Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 8:54 PM Where is the spirit of the rule here in this interpretation? It seems to me that based on this interpretation, there could be a photographer that knew absoluting nothing about birds, who went around taking photos of birds and groups of birds all day long, all year long and then takes them all to an expert to ID. The result would be that this person, who knows nothing about bird identification, would have a huge year list of birds because " The photograph taken at the time of the encounter is the documentation that will ultimately identify the bird." The photograph is certainly documentation to identify the bird, but I agree with Greg Seegert's intrepretation. I think rule must assume that the person getting the documentation is actually looking at the particular bird, thinking about the particular bird and gathering documentation on the particular bird - which in Greg's senario applies to the first bird the Western Sandpiper, but not the second bird the Stint. It makes much more sense and is in the spirit of birding. The point has been clearly made earlier that there are two layers here. One is that a bird can be documented by a photo. The second layer is counting a bird after the fact that a person had no idea was there before the photo was analyzed. John Romano Madison Wis --- On Wed, 4/20/11, jerry937975@xxxxxxx <jerry937975@xxxxxxx> wrote: From: jerry937975@xxxxxxx <jerry937975@xxxxxxx> Subject: [wisb] Re: Counting after the fact birds To: wisbirdn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 8:14 PM Now that I see the rule, the photograph of the theoretical stint should satisfy rule #4. As pointed out, rule 4 says "diagnostic field marks, sufficient to ID to species, must have been seen and/or heard and/or documented at the time of the encounter". Given the use of "or" we can drop the "and". Get rid of the "ands" and you have "diagnostic field marks, sufficient to ID to species must have been seen or heard or documented at the time of the encounter". So "seeing" the bird is not a necessity if it is heard or documented. Hearing the bird is not a necessity if it is seen or documented. And neither hearing or seeing the bird is a necessity if it is simply documented (granted that seems hard to do, but it is the scenario being discussed). The photograph taken at the time of the encounter is the documentation that will ultimately identify the bird. Unless "documented" is further defined specifically as written field notes, I would argue that a photograph does indeed satisfy the requirement of documentation. And as it was clearly taken at the time of the encounter it ultimately does satisfy the rule. IMHO, I think the rules suggest both birds could be counted. Jerry DeBoer Central Racine County #################### You received this email because you are subscribed to the Wisconsin Birding Network (Wisbirdn). To UNSUBSCRIBE or SUBSCRIBE, use the Wisbirdn web interface at: //www.freelists.org/list/wisbirdn To set DIGEST or VACATION modes, use the Wisbirdn web interface at: //www.freelists.org/list/wisbirdn Visit Wisbirdn ARCHIVES at: //www.freelists.org/archives/wisbirdn #################### You received this email because you are subscribed to the Wisconsin Birding Network (Wisbirdn). To UNSUBSCRIBE or SUBSCRIBE, use the Wisbirdn web interface at: //www.freelists.org/list/wisbirdn To set DIGEST or VACATION modes, use the Wisbirdn web interface at: //www.freelists.org/list/wisbirdn Visit Wisbirdn ARCHIVES at: //www.freelists.org/archives/wisbirdn #################### You received this email because you are subscribed to the Wisconsin Birding Network (Wisbirdn). To UNSUBSCRIBE or SUBSCRIBE, use the Wisbirdn web interface at: //www.freelists.org/list/wisbirdn To set DIGEST or VACATION modes, use the Wisbirdn web interface at: //www.freelists.org/list/wisbirdn Visit Wisbirdn ARCHIVES at: //www.freelists.org/archives/wisbirdn