Armchair de-ticks... (1 Viewer)

Armchair ticks are all well and good but the flip side of the coin is armchair deticks. Some helpful person just posted a pic of a nighthawk in Jamaica in the ID forum - http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=180623 - and I confidently thought aha, Common Nighthawk. Little did I know this was about to become the most miserable BF post ever for me.

Thing is I saw one in Grenada in the Southern Caribbean (where it's a a rarity / vagrant) some years back. But this post alerted me to the fact that since I left the Caribbean over ten years ago, some jolly rotters have only gone and split Antillean from Common Nighthawk. I mean how dubious is that anyway - gotta be the dumbest split ever - I mean EVER. Problem is I now have no way of telling whether my "Common Nighthawk" was in fact Common or Antillean Nighthawk. Armchair ticks are fine but armchair de-ticks?? :C

Grr rashnfrashncrashnfrashn (as Muttley would say). :-@ :storm:

Has anybody got any good grounds for suggesting which Nighthawk my record might have been???

Failing that anyone else have any armchair detick stories??

I lost Great Grey Shrike for a while (koenigi) when it became whatever it's called now, which became my bogey bird until this spring (12 years of waiting!)

Think the basic rule of thumb for the nighthawks is the time of year seen. Antilleans (I think) are breeders that winter elsewhere, whereas Commons are non-breeding winter visitors

birdboybowley said:

Think the basic rule of thumb for the nighthawks is the time of year seen. Antilleans (I think) are breeders that winter elsewhere, whereas Commons are non-breeding winter visitors

Click to expand...

Thanks for the effort BBB. My record was 7th November (1994). Trouble is that was Grenada, at the very southern end of the Lesser Antilles. No Nighthawk sp is resident there, only vagrants, so this could conceivably be a lost wintering Antillean Nighthawk or a lost wintering Common Nighthawk. So still currently an armchair de-tick.... :-C

I have had species I lost from my list, but so far not from changes in taxonomy, but rather further scrutiny which made me skeptical I had seen what I had seen. Usually this relates to birds that I saw subsequent to when I was seriously birding, or birds I had only seen fleetingly.

Sorry about your de-tick, gambirder. Could you count it as a "sp."?

Those two nighthawks have been considered separate species since 1982 by the American Ornithologists Union and the American Birding Association.

I lost Great White Heron to the Great AOU Lumping in 1973. I lost a couple of Western Palearctic birds seen in the 1970s to a combination of maturity and better guides.

I suppose I should take Western Orphean Warbler off my list, since I saw a silent autumn bird in the 1970s, long before any field guides treated them as separate species. But, what are the odds of seeing an Eastern Orphean Warbler near Naples, Italy, in October? At any rate, I'll keep it on my list as a "sp." until I see one in breeding range.

My first giant petrel was a bird simply too far away to tell for sure to N or S. I have had it in my list as uncountable hoping that a lump would get me a free tick -- now that has changed, because on a recent trip to Chile, I got both.

Regarding Lesser Antillean Nighthawk, it is a breeding bird in Guadeloupe, but Guadeloupe has also had one accepted record of common nighthawk. I would say that your observation might be a little late in the year to say which one is "most likely" due to range.

Niels

...and on the other hand, just found out from another BF thread that Barbados Bullfinch Loxigilla barbadensis has been split from Lesser Antillean Bullfinch Loxigilla noctis. :news:

Ah well. You win some you lose some I guess...