Thoughts on ticking dead birds (1 Viewer)

wolfbirder said:

I wish I could put it on my BUBO list but remove the tick so it didn't count as one in the rankings.

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Put it on ebird?

It's good to have an accurate location, where a species has been seen, did you take GPS coordinates?

Why don't you download Scythebill and keep your list on there, it has the facility to include as much detail as you want to include? It automatically does your totals and if you generate a list for your next trip, it will indicate your lifers on the list, it's great.


A

andyadcock said:

Put it on ebird?

It's good to have an accurate location, where a species has been seen, did you take GPS coordinates?

Why don't you download Scythebill and keep your list on there, it has the facility to include as much detail as you want to include? It automatically does your totals and if you generate a list for your next trip, it will indicate your lifers on the list, it's great.


A

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Good suggestions, I'll have a look.

Cheers Andy

andyadcock said:

I think that the person inclined to put a HO on their life list, may well be inclined to tick a corpse but that's just my arbitrary, irrational, opinion.

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Doubtful - but you did say you're being arbitrary and irrational lol



Generally no birders tick a dead bird for a list on a personal level, competitive or otherwise (other than for lists going on as part of the Ornithological Record). Some choose to tick birds using senses other than sight (but generally not so much for Life Lists as other (trip/day/site etc) lists, agreed).

I would think the idea would be that birding as a "challenge hobby", failure to see a bird is an implicit possible outcome of looking for or going to see a certain bird. If you could count dead ones, it kind of removes that possibility which then makes it kind of unsporting to do so. Obviously finding a dead bird still can have interesting scientific value, but from the idea of "collecting" sightings as a hobby, it's a bit awkward.

Honestly I would think this would be even more of an issue with terrestrial animals - the fact that roadkill is predominantly mammals and that mammals are predominantly harder to see than birds means that people are more likely to encounter them dead than alive in many species. Not in terms of mammal, but I know I've seen at least one type of snake dead as roadkill that I haven't seen alive.

I would be grateful for the chance to see an unusual bird that close up and wish the bird a speedy journey to its next destination, Buddhist style. I would put it on my rather short special list of freshly killed birds I have seen never seen alive and leave it at that.

As for mammals, I have upgraded Zebra Mouse from "I think I saw it still moving in the talons of a Black-winged Kite" to "flushed when I walked through a field". Mind you, best view of Common Vole was downgraded from "Excellent views" to "Unfortunately suffered a fatal injury thanks to a meeting with the boot of one of my companions"!