RECORDING THAT RARITY

by Ian McKerchar

No matter who you are or what 'level' of birding you're at, finding a rarity is a highlight for us all, whether it's a national, county or local site rarity but why should you have to document the sighting to anyone other than yourself and if you do, what should you put and who the heck assesses it? Read on...

Now THAT'S a county rarity! Black-faced Bunting at Pennington Flash, 1994 (photo by the late Roger Wood)

For many birders, finding their own rarities, of any level, is a driving force in their birding and I have to admit that I fall distinctly into that category but to many others, finding rarities can be a torrid affair. There are forms to fill out, the question of how much or just plain what information to put on it, not knowing what the rarities committee expects, that bunch of people you've never heard of, let alone met but need to convince in order for your sighting to gain universal 'approval'. There are many misconceptions about rarity committee's, whether national or county but the biggest and most potentially damaging are the one's revolving around the ill-conceived premise that rarities committees are there purely to attempt to prove your submission wrong and would like nothing better than to 'tear it up for arse paper' (sorry, not my words but those of a particular observer many years ago!).

Why bother submitting it at all?

As a county rarity, Spoonbill (this photo taken at Pennington Flash) is an obvious enough bird, so why on earth should you have to convince the county rarities committee it was one? (photo by Ian McKerchar)

All birders, no matter who, have to submit their rarities, from BBRC members, County Rarities Committee members, my dad in his back garden to Joe Public who sees 'a big white bird' flying over the high street and quite rightly so as the whole point is that everyone is treated the same, submissions are assessed from their descriptions and not from who are submitting them. Rarities at any level can be very important in a conservation role or for assessing changes in populations, species ranges, even down to the effects of climate change, so it is of great important that these records are correctly documented. For our purposes, those birds that are rare in occurrence in our county (see here for the complete county rarities list), that are perhaps unfamiliar or difficult to separate from another similar species are required to be verified by the rarities committee, that is say that the committee needs to be sure that a mistake has not been made before the record can be published in the Annual County Bird Report and be entered into the definitive county database and be utilised for years to come.

So back to that Spoonbill...

Why bother submitting such a distinctive bird? Spoonbills are very rare county birds with one every few years (at best!), so they require fully documenting and how is the committee expected to know under what circumstances you saw the bird? How do we differentiate between observations such as ones in the photograph above or a claimed bird seen flying away at a range of a mile? How do we know that you have eliminated the possibility of one of the other 'white egrets' unless you can inform us and describe the distinctive bill or flight characteristics of your Spoonbill? Each record is assessed on it's own merits, some might only need to identify key points to gain assessment, others might need much more and this largely depends on the species we are dealing with.

The County Rarities Committee

The rarities team is made up of 5 experienced observers, the Assistant County Bird Recorder (rarities) being permanent and the other four members serving for atleast 5 years. All the members have travelled widely in both the UK and abroad, been on the 'birding scene' for a good period of time and are widely acknowledged to have a very sound understanding of bird identification, all have many previously accepted submissions of county rarities themselves and between us we have a comprehensive knowledge of birders in the county.

As the committee has recently moved onto a completely electronically circulated submissions program where all rarity submissions are dealt with by email, this has hugely speeded up the process of assessment, outcome and notification to the observer. Submissions are dealt with as and when they occur, whereas in the old postal circulations, submissions were accumulated in batches (to save on postage) then circulated around the committee, a process that could often take well over a couple of months! Each submission is assessed privately by each member and the votes to accept or reject accumulated along with comments made by each assessor, records achieve acceptance by gaining a majority of votes (and rejection similarly), although votes of 3 for and 2 against (either for acceptance or rejection) may be recirculated depending on the comments made by the assessors, difficult or contentious submissions can also be left to be discussed at committee meetings if necessary.

One of the most important factors to bear in mind is that the committee can only assess the information you provided in your submission and although occasionally some rejections occur due to genuine mis-identifications, most are perhaps simply due to a lack of information (see below).

What to include in your description

Details on the guidelines for submitting rarities can be found here and should be consulted if you are unsure of what to put on your rarity report form, but consider this fictitious submission (although some regularly carry a very similar amount of limited information) and put yourself in the place of the assessor to gain an understanding of how easily misleading some submissions could be:

Black Stork, over Lightshaw Flash, June 6th 2007.

Seen flying high overhead, west in the direction of the Wigan Flashes in bright sunlight around midday. Mainly black and white with black on breast and long neck and with white on rest of underparts, wings long as was the particularly long and obvious bright reddish bill, legs pinkish/red.

So, seems to fit Black Stork okay? Click this link here to see just how misleading it could be...

The relevance of field notes

When you do happen upon that rarity and you get the opportunity to give it a good grilling, taking in all the relevant details, how are you going to remember it all for later on? Of course, many birders now rely on digital images to document their sightings (which can cause other 'problems', which see below) but field notes are absolutely invaluable to a rarities committee and are unfortunately a rapidly declining feature of modern birding, ask yourself when was the last time you saw someone scribbling sketches of any rarity or interesting bird into a notebook? Sure, we're not all artists but field sketches don't we have to be, even the most rudimentary scribbles will carry precise details of important features, sometimes even unbeknown to the artist!

Left: Field notes of a Leach's Petrel at Heaton Park Reservoir in December 2006. Not the most difficult of species to identify given our good views but I was particularly taken with the extent of wear on the remiges, something I had never experienced before on the species and something which I later learned was a particular feature which fitted other individuals involved with this nationwide wreck of the species (drawings by Ian McKerchar).

Right: Field notes of an acrocephalus warbler at Frodsham, May 2006. Originally touted as a Marsh Warbler due it's apparently odd song and plumage, my careful study of the bird early in it's stay and the features noted here in my notebook (with another pagefull on the other side), especially of the emarginations on the primaries contributed significantly to it's reappraisal and subsequent re-identification as a Reed Warbler (drawings by Ian McKerchar).

One thing is for certain, taking field notes of a bird infront of you forces you to take a good look, to note every feature, the overall shape of the bird (or jizz), the distribution of it's colouration, it's movements and gait, little features that change with the angle it is to you, it is these and the fact that you have noticed them that not only influence the assessment of the committee but perhaps more importantly, contribute to your better understanding of birds and improve your birding.

It can be all too apparent to an experienced committee that the observer has 'embellished' their submission by consulting field guides usually as a result of having taken no notes at the time of the sighting and we would much easily rather assess an honest description that lacked some apparent details than one that reads like an extract from Birds of the Western Palearctic but was apparently amassed from only 30 seconds field observation!

Here are 3 very different examples of ideal submissions:

Left: a Richards Pipit submission by Phil Rhodes. With a brief but concise account of it's finding, notes on the birds characteristic call, field sketch including all the relevant details and Phil's previous good experience with the species (including a previously accepted county record), this submission was easily acceptable but in this instance Phil also obtained several conclusive photographs of the bird but quite rightly, still submitted this rarity report to back up those photos.

Middle: a Red Kite submission by Peter Warburton. No field sketch here but the submission contains excellent detail not only of the events surrounding his finding of the bird and the all important description but also of his consideration and subsequent elimination of any potentially confusable species. Peter's description was also entirely relative to the length and circumstances of his observation.

Right: a Honey Buzzard submission by Dave Broome. As a regular submitter of high quality rarity report forms, Dave combines an excellent written description with sketches, clarifying exactly what he means and eliminating any confusion that could arise and potentially mislead the committee.

The relevance of images in the assessing of submissions

Even though the committee recognises the huge increase in digital photography and the role it has to play in the assessment of rarities, including the committees recently integrated method of assessing particular records by photograph only (without the need for an accompanying written description), digital photographs can often be terribly misleading and I certainly believe that other than those extreme circumstances of a very well watched and closely studied, non-contentious bird, photographs can currently only play a supporting role in the assessment of any record.

Firstly the committee is rightly wary of any rarity submission that only includes the photo of a rarity with no recognisable background in it, call it over cautious but it would not be the first time someone has tried to fool a committee! Digital photographs can very often show colours differently than they appear in the field, especially if they have been altered in Photoshop or a similar program and can be very misleading, going even further, colour representation on computer monitors often varies widely and is something that is usually given little thought. Photographs capture a split second in time and they are heavily influenced by the lighting conditions or the angle or position of the subject, whereas field notes are taken over a period of time and encompass every conceivable angle and position, formulating an overall description and feel for the bird, something only a long series of photographs could only come close to.

Another recent problem of digital photography is that the photographers often becomes engrossed by their subject down the small viewfinder or screen on their camera, an un-involving view that does little for close study and appreciation of any bird. This 'tunnel vision' has lead to mis-identifications in the recent past as birds can often appear appreciably different in a camera screen rather than the involving view through a telescope, pair of binoculars or indeed your own eyes and if the bird should fly off before field notes can be obtained (and don't they always!) the observer is usually left to assemble a description off the photographs they have achieved, often a mistake.

Of course, digital photography has a large part to play in modern birding and I for one certainly enjoy the new opportunities it offers but I do fear we often place too much importance on it and would like to think that both photographs and field notes can still go hand in hand but how many of you take a digital camera out birding and how may do the same with a note book? That said, digital photography is undoubtedly (how ever much I grumble!) the future and there may well come a time when field descriptions are no more as a recent rarity submissions to BBRC of a series of digital photographs only, with important features pointed out and inserted onto the images proved highly successful and even I had to admit that I wouldn't mind receiving afew submissions of it's quality!

And finally...

Most important is for us to enjoy our birding as there can often be too much emphasis and pressure on what is, for most of us atleast, a hobby, albeit one that seems to take over our lives! Modern rarities committees need to be approachable, understandable and transparent, afterall we're birders just like everyone else, so if you have any problems or queries, whether about a rarity you've just seen, a submission you either haven't received a decision for or a decision you don't agree with, or any other matter, I, like the other members of the committee will be only too happy to discuss it where ever possible.

One we might want to know about....

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank County Rarities Committee members Rob Adderley, Adam Davison, Pete Hines and Andy Isherwood for comments and conversations which not only contributed to but inspired the writing of this article.

References:

British Birds, February 2007, Vol. 100, 70-136

Ian Mckerchar (June 2007)