• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Some bird reports..... Why? (1 Viewer)

M

Mannix

Well-known member
Here is just one example of a bird report for which I can find absolutely no use whatsoever. Can anyone tell me why these reports are reported and what use they are to anyone. Maybe I am being thick. This is from today......

S.Yorks. Hobby flew North over Haugh Road at 4.20pm

I just don't get it.
 
Maybe no use to you. . . But possibly the person who saw it was pleased to see it, and wanted to share the sighting . . . nothing wrong with that?? ;)

Who's to judge what is a good bird for one person? Maybe they hadn't seen Hobby before. Or there aren't too many sightings in that locale. If one is seen once, could mean they are in the area. . . it's not all about rarities.

Admittedly, in the case of a flyover Hobby, it's not going to get twitched, and may well still be on migration, or seen occasionally in that locale as part of its territory. So, no 'use' in some senses . . . but where do you draw the line??
 
dantheman said:
Maybe no use to you. . . But possibly the person who saw it was pleased to see it, and wanted to share the sighting . . . nothing wrong with that?? ;)

Who's to judge what is a good bird for one person? Maybe they hadn't seen Hobby before. Or there aren't too many sightings in that locale. If one is seen once, could mean they are in the area. . . it's not all about rarities.

Admittedly, in the case of a flyover Hobby, it's not going to get twitched, and may well still be on migration, or seen occasionally in that locale as part of its territory. So, no 'use' in some senses . . . but where do you draw the line??
Click to expand...

My question wasn't to demean anyone, but if you wanted to share your sighting then what better place than a Bird Forum. I just can't find any use for putting it on a site which is designed to help people locate and see birds as you will no doubt not see this bird if you go to the location.
 
Mannix said:
My question wasn't to demean anyone, but if you wanted to share your sighting then what better place than a Bird Forum. I just can't find any use for putting it on a site which is designed to help people locate and see birds as you will no doubt not see this bird if you go to the location.
Click to expand...

Apparently, official records state that in Berkshire,the Wren is a rare bird. Because its seldom reported to the recorder!
Another random obervation!
 
Surely the knowledge that a Hobby was in the locale would be useful to other birders about who wanted to see a Hobby. I know a report from my patch in N. Yorks had me down there the next day with success. Also these sightings give an overall picture of the day for scarce and local birds i.e. are good numbers of birds in Yorkshire, multiple reports would suggest they are so it might be worth having a crack at your own patch.
 
As someone who has researched a couple of avifaunas, I can tell you that all records are useful at some point. Maybe in 100 years time, someone will be compiling records for that area, and will be grateful. As mentioned, records of common birds are actually scarce. Just look at e.g. Dunnock in your local annual report. There are probably more records of Crane...

The web is now one of the first reference points, with researchers scouring these sightings sites for such records, as many of these don't get published elsewhere. It can be very boring when you are trying to characterize an area, but only have records from 3 or 4 well-watched reserves, as these dominate most of the reports.

The main use of records like this are for building a picture of birds in the area, frequency of such occurrences, perhaps Atlases, and of course pure old anecdotal interest.
 
Last edited:
I agree that it may be useful as a research tool but it does make trawling through to find something worth going to see a pain. I mean where do you stop? ........
Yorkshire, Blackbird seen on football field.
(not migratory I know but just as much use both as a bird finder and as a research tool.)
 
Mannix said:
I agree that it may be useful as a research tool but it does make trawling through to find something worth going to see a pain. I mean where do you stop? ........
Yorkshire, Blackbird seen on football field.
(not migratory I know but just as much use both as a bird finder and as a research tool.)
Click to expand...
It does sound as if you might be at an extreme end of users of BirdForum. In that light it's not really designed to meet your needs. Isn't there a paging service for twitchers that would give you much more focussed and speedy information ?

Mike.
 
Just put your discrimating filters up higher than common birds then you wouldnt need to receive this info. With birdguides i blieve the emails are free as a subscriber so why dont you get them sent but only scarce or rarer. That would filter the wheat from the chaff.
 
Mannix said:
I agree that it may be useful as a research tool but it does make trawling through to find something worth going to see a pain. I mean where do you stop? ........
Yorkshire, Blackbird seen on football field.
(not migratory I know but just as much use both as a bird finder and as a research tool.)
Click to expand...

I can see your point throughout the thread and i do sympathise with some of your sentiment. I think using Hobby was a bad example as it's always a good bird to see and maybe someone living in the area may well have seen it if they had access to the news services.

Being involved in LROS as newsletter editor I get to see all the records for our county each month and there's usually a bird or two that we all wish HAD been reported to the news services. It's fair to say that since we moved to a largely computerised way of submitting records, records even for common species have soared. This is good news for us in terms of being able to monitor populations more effectively but a nightmare for doing the fieldnotes.

On balance you can choose to ignore the record of Hobby if it's nowhere near to you but I'd rather see it reported. One way of working out when's a good time for looking for firsts for the year or scarce birds like Hobby or Ring Ouzel is when the news services report them moving through the country. Ring Ouzel turning up on Blows Down in Beds usually mean that one or two will be seen a day or so later in Leicestershire.

The reports on the news services that we could really do without are those that report a Pomarine Skua past Spurn a week last Wednesday... and there are plenty of similar reports to that.
 
Mannix said:
Here is just one example of a bird report for which I can find absolutely no use whatsoever. Can anyone tell me why these reports are reported and what use they are to anyone. Maybe I am being thick. This is from today......

S.Yorks. Hobby flew North over Haugh Road at 4.20pm

I just don't get it.
Click to expand...

Difficult to know where to draw the line, but I can see benefit in reporting birds like that. Sure, it is unlikely that anyone is going to twitch that bird, or see it if they do. These reports do though act as a heads-up that there are, in this case, Hobbies coming through just now, that might direct people to go out and keep and eye open, and maybe see one. Or if it was Honey Buzzard going north, again no one is going to successfully twitch it, but they might be forewarned into looking for and finding their own.

Similarly seawatch stuff... a report of a Balearic Shearwater north past Filey at 10.30 yesterday might not be much use to anyone, but it gets other people out seawatching along the east coast, and suddenly it becomes obvious that there are 10s of Balearic Shearwaters going up the coast, and it turns a single near-useless sighting into an interesting movement.
 
Jack Haggis said:
I can see your point throughout the thread and i do sympathise with some of your sentiment. I think using Hobby was a bad example as it's always a good bird to see and maybe someone living in the area may well have seen it if they had access to the news services.

Being involved in LROS as newsletter editor I get to see all the records for our county each month and there's usually a bird or two that we all wish HAD been reported to the news services. It's fair to say that since we moved to a largely computerised way of submitting records, records even for common species have soared. This is good news for us in terms of being able to monitor populations more effectively but a nightmare for doing the fieldnotes.

On balance you can choose to ignore the record of Hobby if it's nowhere near to you but I'd rather see it reported. One way of working out when's a good time for looking for firsts for the year or scarce birds like Hobby or Ring Ouzel is when the news services report them moving through the country. Ring Ouzel turning up on Blows Down in Beds usually mean that one or two will be seen a day or so later in Leicestershire.

The reports on the news services that we could really do without are those that report a Pomarine Skua past Spurn a week last Wednesday... and there are plenty of similar reports to that.
Click to expand...

I agree with what you say. When birds like swifts started to re-appear it was good to know they were back in the country but I believe that there is a cut off point when the country is saturated by the birds. The thing is, I see things like Hobbys and Yellow Wagtails on an almost daily basis, should I send in a report? My thoughts are no I shouldn't but maybe there are people who think I should. The RBA would be a nightmare if we all did. The problem with setting the filters to ignore common species is that I am actually fairly new to birding and there are common birds which I have not yet seen and which if they were in my area I would go and see. I would not however go and see a bird which someone had seen fly over their heads and disappear into the distance. (I haven't seen a pintail yet try as I might to find one)
 
Mannix said:
........The problem with setting the filters to ignore common species is that I am actually fairly new to birding and there are common birds which I have not yet seen and which if they were in my area I would go and see. I would not however go and see a bird which someone had seen fly over their heads and disappear into the distance. (I haven't seen a pintail yet try as I might to find one)
Click to expand...

But you can't have it both ways. You don't want to see Hobby reported because you see them frequently, yet you also don't want to filter out common species because you might not have seen them.

In my area, Hobby is quite a rarity, and I would be delighted to see one. Pintail on the otherhand are two-a-penny, and I wouldn't travel to the end of the road to see one. So I could argue, keep all of the Hobby sightings, but drop the Pintails.

In anycase, it depends who your target audience is. When I report a local scarcity such as Hobby, I'm actually aiming the report at birders local to my area, not people who live miles away.

I've just seen a Bluethroat reported on Hilbre Island. I'd love to see that, but only because its on Hilbre. I wouldn't neccessarily travel to the east coast to see it.
 
Coigach said:
But you can't have it both ways. You don't want to see Hobby reported because you see them frequently, yet you also don't want to filter out common species because you might not have seen them.
QUOTE]

I don't recall saying I didn't want to see a Hobby on the RBA. What I actually said was that I don't understand why people report birds which fly overhead as seeing them is not an option. If a Hobby were perching or nesting in my area I would love to know about it.
Please don't make things up.
Click to expand...
 
Mannix said:
Coigach said:
But you can't have it both ways. You don't want to see Hobby reported because you see them frequently, yet you also don't want to filter out common species because you might not have seen them.
QUOTE]

I don't recall saying I didn't want to see a Hobby on the RBA. What I actually said was that I don't understand why people report birds which fly overhead as seeing them is not an option. If a Hobby were perching or nesting in my area I would love to know about it.
Please don't make things up.
Click to expand...

Well please don't say daft things then
Click to expand...
 
I don't see the problem with reporting a flyover bird, it could well be pretty much useless for seeing that individual if it carries on flying, but who's to say it won't be seen a bit further on, or may return to the area. Much better to have too much information and choose what interests us than to have too little.
 
Case in point the Snow Goose thats tracked heading to norfolk most years down the east coast usually sightings at every headland on the east coast. Or Albatross past multiple headlands
 
nickderry said:
I don't see the problem with reporting a flyover bird, it could well be pretty much useless for seeing that individual if it carries on flying, but who's to say it won't be seen a bit further on, or may return to the area. Much better to have too much information and choose what interests us than to have too little.
Click to expand...

I agree with this to a degree but where do you draw the line? How many Hobbies, Little Egrets, Garden Warblers, Black Terns, Yellow Wagtails, Garganeys, Ruffs, Turtle Doves, Cuckoos, and Avocets etc do you estimate are in the country right now? If everyone who saw one "flying over" reported it then the RBA staff would not be able to keep up and subscribers would have to trawl through thousands of birds flying over in order to see something worthwhile. I still do not understand why most fly overs have a place on sites like RBA.
 
Last edited:
Hotspur said:
Case in point the Snow Goose thats tracked heading to norfolk most years down the east coast usually sightings at every headland on the east coast. Or Albatross past multiple headlands
Click to expand...

How many Snow Geese are reported each year as opposed to Hobbies etc. This is my point. Snow Goose yes Hobby no.
 
Warning! This thread is more than 16 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Similar threads

Mysticete
AI and rare birds
2 3 4
Replies
67
Views
4K
Mysticete
Mysticete
G
I found an Injured Bird.
Replies
4
Views
590
Kits
Kits
L
Bird Tours with the company Tropicalbirding
Replies
11
Views
2K
sicklebill
sicklebill
A
Why don't we use What3words for bird sightings?
2
Replies
26
Views
2K
dantheman
dantheman
lmans66
Bird Diary
Replies
3
Views
797
RichardBaatsen
RichardBaatsen

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top