Phil Andrews
It's only Rock and Roller but I like it
Hughie raised some good points with his three questions first, do we dismiss these? Well Phil answered that one. For an "official" list I think one would have to dismiss anything that hasn’t been accepted by the relevant body (County Recorder / BBRC).
What is official and what is not? Again we have to have a Benchmark to work from so if it’s not accepted by the relevant body it’s not official. Who decides? Well for listing purposes we have to give all records a chance hence a County Recorder but if birds are not submitted that’s up to the individual. So at the end of the day Phil is right, the checklist should only include sightings accepted by the county recorder. As regards Goshawk there is only one accepted record 26th Feb -30th March 2000 per Birds Of The Sandwell Valley. hope this helps
Good Birding YAMYAM
Hi YY - I dragged out the 2000 WMBC annual report and would confirm that a Goshawk was accepted on 7 days between the range of dates you quote. The finders were Paul Hackett and TC Hextell.