Rick Wright (editor of the American Birding Association "Winging It" newsletter) posted this back in May.
A toned-down version of the above article appears in the latest Winging It issue. It's available online here (PDF format).
I agree with Wright's general point (well-described sight records can be valuable). However, I think the point is moot for the particular case of the Arkansas "Ivory-bill"--to the best of my knowledge, no sight record for that bird has ever been submitted to any birding records committee.
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...because it would be completely pointless to submit a sight record of a species that is considered extinct?
"...because it would be completely pointless to submit a sight record of a species that is considered extinct?"
...or maybe because Cornell's "sight records" are all so uniformly lousy that they would be immediately rejected by any competent birding records committee? And maybe those rejections would not be helpful in Ivory-bill marketing efforts?
Like I keep saying, there are plenty of well-documented IBWO records. The problem is that photographic documentation always shows Pileated Woodpecker. The believers then just write those off as "obviously erroneous." The head vampires even make fun of these records after it becomes obvious that they are PIWO! And round and round we go. The blurrier, the better!
Along the lines of getting an official "opinion" on the whole IBWO thing from the "Professional Ornithological Community," why doesn't the AOU Checklist Committee hand down a decision on the authenticity/integrity of the AR IBWO records? Would the other members have the balls to form a majority opinion over the objections of Remsen?
Tom-
You are almost correct. Certainly, 99.9% of all IBWO sightings never get submitted to a records committee. However, the 1 April 1999 sighting by David Kulivan at the Pearl River WMA, LA, WAS reviewed by the Louisiana Bird Records Committee. I'm not sure if Kulivan meant to officially submit the record or not, but a one page typed summary of his observation came into the possession of the LBRC and it was duly evaluated and unanimously considered unacceptable by the seven members. That decision is published on page 91 of the "Ninth Report of the LBRC" in the Journal of Louisiana Ornithology Vol. 6, pp 41-101 (2003).
Anonymous wrote:
"Along the lines of getting an official "opinion" on the whole IBWO thing from the "Professional Ornithological Community," why doesn't the AOU Checklist Committee hand down a decision on the authenticity/integrity of the AR IBWO records?"
I agree. Tom how about a thread on this topic?
Here's an AOU meeting proposal from a previous thread along those lines:
"We move that the Committee on Classification and Nomenclature consider making a checklist update of the distributional status of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker based on the Arkansas evidence. If an update is not warranted, the Committee should minimally report back to the membership about its deliberations."
Tom et al.-
Sorry for jumping the gun RE the records committee post. Obviously, I did not read the original post carefully and thought it referred to records in general versus AR specifically.
--Steve Cardiff
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