birdmeister
Well-known member
Looks like Nicole picked up Barnacle Goose in New York.
Looks like Nicole picked up Barnacle Goose in New York.
NK went San Diego county yesterday for Little Stint, which I didn't realize she hadn't gotten yet.
...where she picked up Nutting's Flycatcher.
Joe
Heard only, just the wheep call twice from some grove. How really diagnostic is this call?
With many flycatchers, I would prefer "heard only" to "seen only".
Some flycatchers are difficult, or impossible, to positively identify unless they are heard. Willow and Alder Flycatcher for example can't be separated by sight alone.
Hmmm ... some can, essentially. (Cornwall anyone? )
I doubt the Cornish bird would have been accepted without being trapped and/or DNA but certainly the Norfolk one as a second was accepted as a photographed sight record.
Ask blind birders if heard only is acceptable.... I think you have to separate the listing thing from birding. It would be unsatisfactory to me to put a heard-only on a life list, essentially because I am a visually motivated animal. If I had no sight it would definitely be a different matter! I think using hearing as the primary sensor is as valid as sight. Given that, it ought to be as valid for a sighted birder as a blind one: it just doesn't quite work for me. That's not even about culture, its my personal values.
I have no compunction in putting a calling bird on a year list because for the most part (if the ID is rock-solid) it doesn't offend my sense of listing a confirmed bird, and in a few instances of rare breeding birds such as Corncrake it has the potential to be a more ethical way of listing the bird than insisting on seeing it with possible attendant disturbance.
So far as normal birding is concerned I use my ears to identify or discard individual birds as objects of interest all the time. If it sounds like a Blue Tit I most likely won't stop to look at/for it.
John