Finch in Florida

Possible new ABA species in Florida?

HOT OFF THE HOTLINE

I just read another interesting bird report today on a great sighting of a RED-LEGGED HONEYCREEPER at the entrance to Royal Palm trail in Everglades National Park. This bird is the 4th bird reported within the past year and is making a good case to be a newly added species!!! I am going to make the 4.5 hr trip down tonight and hope for the best! For more info on this bird, check out this link http://www.birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/FLAB.html#1077398849

A photo of this species can be found here: http://www.softbills.com/images/photo_q/redleg_hcreeper.jpg

So, if all goes well I will hopefully give an update on the status of this bird. My luck hasn't been too great down in the Everglades, as I had dipped twice on Black-faced Grassquit last fall in the park...but then again, maybe I am due this time. Lets hope so!

RARE BIRD DOCUMENTION TIPS

Some interesting discussions have been occuring on the Minnesota Ornithologist's Union's Listserve as of late in regards to the official state checklist of birds and their status of relative scarcity or abundance in the state.
/phorum/read.php?f=88&i=4582&t=4582 Due to what some birders believe are questionable changes on the list (For example, demoting KING RAIL from the Casual list down to Accidental and downgrading GYRFALCON from a Regular species down to a Casual species) some of the discussion has found its way towards bird record acceptance in general. In other words, are birders correctly identifying species in the state, but then unfortunately have their records rejected by the state committee do to incomplete documention? It is a shame that there are always a decent number of rarities that don't make the official state records due to improper documentation. For those birders who wish to learn more about properly documenting rarites (which should be all of us!) Peder Svingen, current MOU records commitee chair, provides some great web-based resources for better bird documentation:

Dittmann, D. L., and G. W. Lasley. 1992. How to document rare birds.
Birding 24:145_159. Available online at http://www.greglasley.net/document.html
or via the LOS website at http://www.losbird.org/dittman_lasley.htm

Lynch, M. 1995. The importance of documenting birds. Bird Observer 23(5).
Available online at http://massbird.org/marc/Documentation.htm

Helpful hints on documentation from the Oklahoma Bird Records Committee
can be found online at http://www.okbirds.org/how_to.html

The Maryland Bird Records Committee has dedicated a page to the late
Claudia Wilds as a tribute to her identification and documentation skills
at http://www.mdbirds.org/mddcrc/rcdocument.html

Mark Patterson has posted a step-by-step primer on writing convincing
details at http://www.pacifier.com/~mpatters/details/details.html

Wilds, C, and R. Hilton. 1992. Emerging from the silent majority:
documenting rarities. Maryland Birdlife 48:30_35. Available online at http://www.mdbirds.org/mddcrc/rarities.html

Posted by tuffrasta at February 21, 2004 06:18 PM