Valid records (1 Viewer)

One of the greatest challenges in birding seems to be establishing the authenticity of records. Even in the digital age (with most birders digiscoping) how does one know if records are genuine ? Best policy is report honestly.

Judging reports of rarities

This is a difficult debate. One local committee recently considered the following suggested guidelines:

The following policy about photographs applies to all submitted records and will be implemented immediately and retrospectively for all records from 2010 onwards.

Photographs are welcome to be submitted, preferably in support of a written description but where this is not possible, the photographs alone will be considered.

All photographs must meet the following criteria in order to be considered:
• The photograph must be of a bird taken in the field or during ringing (or handling due to stranding) and taken within our recording area
• The date on the photograph data and EXIF data must match each other and match the date of the reported sighting
• The time recorded on the photograph data or EXIF data must approximately relate to the time that bird information services and/or other observers were told that the bird was present
• The submitted photograph must satisfy the committee that it is a new report and does not look like any previously published or submitted photograph for the same species at any site e.g. a bird of the said species taken at the site or nearby on a previous date
• The submitted photograph must have been taken by the named observer who submits the record unless permission has been given by the photographer and a satisfactory explanation offered
• Multiple shots by the same observer should show in the data or EXIF data that they were taken with the same camera, and unless the bird is long staying, should have been taken on the same date and at a similar time
• Where possible the bird depicted should be within a habitat that other birders, familiar with the site, can verify is a likely setting for the bird
• Photographs should be unedited except for image size and sharpening unless of a multi-observed, multi-photographed bird
• The camera data should in no way have been altered or modified by the photographer. Any editing, modification or deleting of data will exclude a photograph from the record assessment process
• The photograph must not have been submitted to the committee of another site or county in support of a separate claim
• The explanation given of how the bird was photographed must sound credible in the view of the committee
• Photographs taken on cameras that are reported to have intermittent faults to their time and date recording will not be considered reliable and will be discounted

Where a photograph does not meet these guidelines then the photograph will not be considered by the committee.

Where any observer provides photograph where doubts arise as to the veracity of the picture submitted, then the committee reserves the right to stipulate that it must be a description only submission, if only one observer saw the bird.

The committee reserves the right to gather expert opinion from any expert observer or photographer that it sees fit in order to verify the authenticity of a submitted photograph.

The committee also reserves the right to decline accepting future photographic submissions from any observer where sufficient doubts have been expressed about the veracity of any single submitted photograph record.

Thats a lot of lengths to be considering going to but then fraudulent claims by otherwise competent birders are taking place. Is it also happening near you ?

This seems like a conversation initiated in the middle, and lacking a specific subject. What committee? Records submitted to whom? Why the abstruse monikers - "honest opinion", "discoverer of truth"?

Its an almost impossible task to remove all fraudulent records. The key is to reduce the amount to the minimum by making it as difficult as possible to get these dodgy records accepted.

CB

Why do people come on BF to have a conversation with themselves?

There were a lot fraudulent records last year.

The fabrication of sightings can sadly undermine the maintenance of bird records, the enjoyment of other birders and it costs others a lot of time, money and effort if it is rare birds that are falsely claimed. This is a problem worthy of highlighting in broad terms whilst giving no detail that might identify the individuals involved. On both sides of the pond raising awareness of how fabrication is happening is surely more than a private conversation and worthy of airing in this forum ? I understand that one birder fabricated claims locally and sometimes nationally that are covered by the extensive criteria above. That's a lot by one person. If there are just a few such individuals then that is a lot of invalid records.

As a County Recorder, if I was to use the criteria set out in posting #2, then pretty well every photo I receive would have to be rejected! I don't know which 'local committee' suggested these guidelines, but I would see them as unrealistic for most counties.

Nowhere will achieve 100% accuracy with record assessment. Common birds will be wrongly identified or fraudulently claimed as rarities, rare birds will be missed when they get overlooked as common species. A large % of rare birds (at local and national levels) will be just totally missed anyway (depending on species). A seemingly increasing number of people just aren't interested in record submission full stop, so many significant sightings aren't added into local/national record databases. In a thankless job, all a local recorder can do is his/her best to collate and verify the records available. Accept that you'll never get everything right all the time, but take realistic steps to do the best you can.

Mark

Some digital camera data cannot be changed

Thanks Mark, you raise some constructive points. The suggested criteria were indeed too extensive. The critical issue out of all the proposals seems to be the simple fact that the data contained in the xmp data of a submitted rarity photo should be matched by the EXIF data and the date of the observer's claim. If this is not the case, the photo cannot be relied upon as valid evidence of a rarity report because by accident or by malice some camera data cannot be manipulated. I believe that you are correct that county recorders have far too much to do to be getting too concerned with some of these matters, except to say if the camera data isn't right (for whatever reason) then the photo evidence cannot be considered.