May 16, 2005
A rare breed
The human need to create hobbies around the celebration of rarity is a strange one. The compulsion to attach value to diamonds, antique furniture or rare animals has sparked many a battle. And the tendency for some to become irrational over these rare things has led to the need to set boundaries to protect property and habitats. We saw a recent example of this with the rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. The folks who re-found it felt obliged to withhold the announcement for at least a year out of concern over the rarity seekers. An inevitable secondary effect of rarity finding is the ripple of other rarities reports that follow, both real and imagined.
One form of the ripple effect is the well documented Patagonia phenomenon. The Patagonia rest stop in Arizona is routinely visited by birders in part, because it's a rest stop. The increased use by birders results in better coverage, so things get found. Those found species attract more birders, increasing the coverage even more and more interesting things get found. The Patagonia rest stop is probably not any more special than other spots in Arizona. What makes it a hot spot are access and advertisement.
Access and advertisement are routine topics of discussion among birders. Not every bird turns up in a place with access and so the question of advertising becomes a legitimate and often contentious issue. The semiannual, what-to-post-on-the-listserve debate fired up yesterday over an unchasable GARGANEY in Linn Co. There is a subset of the birding community that seems to feel that the only reports that matter are those with access. All others, essentially, don't exist and shouldn't be reported, because they can't be chased. There are also people who choose not to report rare species when accessibility is an issue, for fear of having sensitive sites overrun by birders.
There are legitimate reasons to withhold information, Ivory-billed Woodpeckers being a case in point. But birders live under a big tent and the value of knowing about unaccessible birds is significant. In many cases, the appearance of a rare species speaks to a larger trend which makes the most sense when taken with the whole of other reports. These trends can be very hard to see if some information is delayed or excluded over access issues.
For example, last fall (2004) there was a remarkable fallout of fairly rare eastern warblers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Taken singly they don't mean much, because there are always a few seen in the fall. This was substantial however, many were unchasable and a few lingered well into the winter season.
These patterns are certainly of interest to biogeographers, but they also provide useful information to the rarities chasing hobbiest. Most of us probably live in a place like the Patagonia Rest stop in Arizona. We just don't know it. It's often just a matter of knowing when to look and a willingness to recognize and appreciate what is rare and special in our own backyards instead of chasing off to some else's Patagonia.
Posted by mbalame at May 16, 2005 6:13 PM