A couple of ABA firsts (or "firsts" depending on your viewpoint this week): A River Warbler was just found up in Alaska, while New Mexico had a Variable Hawk at a hawk watch site. There is a previous record of the latter from Colorado in the...1980's? which was not accepted on provenance, but maybe is worth a second look?
Here's the rationale, as I understand it:
Using the 2016 Pine Flycatcher as an example - the species is not yet officially countable as it has not yet been added to the ABA Checklist. If it's not added then everyone drops the bird. If it is, then all four of them add the bird; it's still not on any of their "official" lists. How is that different than, say, Hawaii Elepiao? In the same update, this species will either be added to the checklist or not, with the birders having the same result. At this moment, all the Hawaiian species are provisional until the list comes out.
Now, if ABA decides to stand by the original statement that Hawaiian species seen in 2016 do not count for 2016 Big Years, that's a decision they're allowed to make. Their ball, their rules. By the same token, if they decide to let birders count them, that's their call, too.
An eager birding nation awaits.
Joe
Joe
I've never understood the ABA reluctance to update and review lists including established exotics & taxonomy.
Exactly the same arguments can be made for those as firsts and Hawaiian birds in my view.
I just find it amusing with the 2016 scrap that the differing arguments on all sides seem to be dictated by who is putting them forward and when and now the dust has settled and all four went, Hawaii is being pushed when the contrary was being spun before that happened. B
But that has never been any different. I re-read the Epilogue last night of the most recent edition of Kingbird Highway when Ken Kaufman was practically rejoicing at the expectation that Sandy Komito's historic totals may be struck from the record. Something that never happened in the end.
None of this is any different over here. I could tell you practically identical stories from British yearlisting scraps a quarter of a century ago (over fifteen years before the current record-holder discovered birds because his car passenger started counting..... )
All the best
I also think it has to do with fairness, time and resources. Should you spend precious Big Year time/money chasing a subspecies? Should you be retroactively penalized for not doing so? IMHO, no. Let's take Hawaii out of this for a moment. What if Olaf picked up four subspecies that get added two years from now? Does he unseat John? I would not think that fair, and I get along famously with all four of them. John busted his tail at the end just to get that one last species that could end up making the difference. Olaf could have gone for it, too, and chose not to. Eyes wide open.
The rules of the game are set at the start of the year: go! Everyone knows that new ABA records (Pine Flycatcher) are fair game; everyone has a clue about splits during the year with enough time to clean them up (all the 2017 people went after the Cassia Crossbill).
The Hawaii aspect is tricky; Olaf's agenda was to set a US record and to raise awareness of the endangered/threatened Hawaiian species. He'd planned to go to Hawaii all along, even at the possible cost of missing Continental ABA species. The fact that John and Laura also went contributed greatly to their now (unintendedly) joint agenda of raising awareness about these species. I believe they forwarded that mission much more thoroughly than any of them could have imagined. Heck, I couldn't have spelled Elapiao a year ago! Now I've typed all the Hawaii species into a new version of the spreadsheet that I'll share after ABA releases the updated list. I have the species list for all three last year and all three this year, all confirmed by each respective birder.
Joe