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Sources of Information (plus letting people down gently) (1 Viewer)

Mono

Mono

Hi!
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Yesterday a friend of mine on Facebook posted that he had just had 6 Red Throated Thrushes in his garden in the UK. A claimed to have eliminated Fieldfare and Redwing as possibilities and that they could only be Red Throated.

Now I knew this was most likely absurd, a quick look in Collins gave it a V*** but I checked the RBA map on here and found nothing. But I wanted to give him a better response with some actual UK data to say... the last UK one was... they occur once a year/once a decade... etc. But there I met a blank. All the historic bird information on the bird news services is hidden behind paywalls. I did eventually find one record on ebird but I know ebird is not that popular in the UK.

So does anybody have any tips for us non-twitchers who don't want to stump up for subscriptions to get such historic data.

As an aside I elected not to tell him that they were not in all likelihood what he thought they were. It made him happy that he thought he saw them and it is such an unlikely string that no one is going to see it on Facebook and go for the twitch.
 
Mono said:
Yesterday a friend of mine on Facebook posted that he had just had 6 Red Throated Thrushes in his garden in the UK. A claimed to have eliminated Fieldfare and Redwing as possibilities and that they could only be Red Throated.

Now I knew this was most likely absurd, a quick look in Collins gave it a V*** but I checked the RBA map on here and found nothing. But I wanted to give him a better response with some actual UK data to say... the last UK one was... they occur once a year/once a decade... etc. But there I met a blank. All the historic bird information on the bird news services is hidden behind paywalls. I did eventually find one record on ebird but I know ebird is not that popular in the UK.

So does anybody have any tips for us non-twitchers who don't want to stump up for subscriptions to get such historic data.

As an aside I elected not to tell him that they were not in all likelihood what he thought they were. It made him happy that he thought he saw them and it is such an unlikely string that no one is going to see it on Facebook and go for the twitch.
Click to expand...

Most people are able to understand from the excellent Collins guide, what the status of most birds is, especially something as rare as Rt Thrush so I wouldn't really expect anyone to have to 'stump up' for any subscriptions.

Here's a link to the BTO which shows the status of all birds to have occured in Britain. It's not precise but Rt Thrush is shown to have fewer than ten records (actually only 1 as Mark states) so six at once is perhaps, shall we say, improbable.

https://www.bto.org/about-birds/birdfacts/british-list


A
 
Thanks for the info, so 6 in Watford yesterday is more of a long shot than I thought it was!
 
Another option: go to the BirdForum Rare Bird Information section; enter the name of the species you want to look up into the Search this Forum (orange box toward top right), and look for the top entry for that species that says 'Breaking news from RBA'. There you get a little potted summary for the number of British and Irish records at the top of the thread.

Sadly I doubt it'd work for Red-throated Thrush as the only record is so long ago, but it is useful for 'commoner rarities' :t:
 
KenM said:
Am intrigued as to what the 6 Thrushes actually were?.......
Click to expand...

Song Thrushes.

Bear with me;
Fieldfare and Redwing are what you expect to see in winter flocks, not Song. And you don't often look hard at Song Thrush; except in winter they keep out of sight, so you yeartick by song, or a bird in a treetop, don't you?

Say they were a party in from elsewhere, so looking 'off' from local birds [there's more variation than those books tell us, after all]. Maybe even a bit muddy on their tails to 'help' when the poor fellow looks through his book going "what thrushes are they...?!??"

It's a thought.
 
The Kerreran said:
Song Thrushes.

Bear with me;
Fieldfare and Redwing are what you expect to see in winter flocks, not Song. And you don't often look hard at Song Thrush; except in winter they keep out of sight, so you yeartick by song, or a bird in a treetop, don't you?

Say they were a party in from elsewhere, so looking 'off' from local birds [there's more variation than those books tell us, after all]. Maybe even a bit muddy on their tails to 'help' when the poor fellow looks through his book going "what thrushes are they...?!??"

It's a thought.
Click to expand...

Hard to follow the reasoning tbh but a Song Thrush and Rt Thrush are not readily confusable to most.


A
 
andyadcock said:
Hard to follow the reasoning tbh but a Song Thrush and Rt Thrush are not readily confusable to most.


A
Click to expand...

True, but this isn't a hardcore birder [we assume, I think reasonably]. And a monospecific flock is not the same as a mixed one.
If we allow that Fieldfare and Redwing have been fairly ruled out - and they are both quite distinctive, in both size/structure and plumage - then, as Ken asked 'what were they?'

A Song Thrush with a dirty tail [think ruddy not brown mud] looks far more like Rt Thrush than anything else you're likely to see in Britain.

Unless he's saying they were adults, in which case I call Robin. ;)
 
The Kerreran said:
True, but this isn't a hardcore birder [we assume, I think reasonably]. And a monospecific flock is not the same as a mixed one.
If we allow that Fieldfare and Redwing have been fairly ruled out - and they are both quite distinctive, in both size/structure and plumage - then, as Ken asked 'what were they?'

A Song Thrush with a dirty tail [think ruddy not brown mud] looks far more like Rt Thrush than anything else you're likely to see in Britain.

Unless he's saying they were adults, in which case I call Robin. ;)
Click to expand...

Ruled out by whom?

IMHO the birds were probably Fieldfares but it's irrelevant now but they sure weren't Rt Thrushes!


A
 
I didn't need to disabuse him of his ID, John Cantelo (of this house!) has replied to his Facebook post!
 
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