Curtis Croulet said:as I understand the workings of the CBRC, the bird would probably go on the "review" list, pending better evidence.
Hi Curtis,
I'm not sure that you have the correct definition of 'review species'. A 'review species' in CT at least is a species whose sighting should be documented and sent to the avian records committee (for review) because of it's rarity. The only halfway house in this state is for a handful of birds and they are accepted as of uncertain origin - this basically refers to a few waterfowl records which although there seems a good possibility that the birds are wild there is no way of being certain (in my opinion a bit of a weird category) - see below for the Avian Records Committee of Connecticut decision on Barnacle Goose that turned up here some years back . Apart from that people either get a yay or nay on their sightings. Nays tend to be either questioning of the identification or origin of the bird. It is certainly possible for rejected birds to later be accepted due to further evidence being supplied but birds aren't accepted pending further evidence.
Luke
ACCEPT - ORIGIN UNCERTAIN
BARNACLE GOOSE (Branta leucopsis). An apparent adult was located on the Stearn's Farm property in Mansfield, Tolland County, 4 December 2001 and stayed through the first part of January 2002 (Mark Szantyr*‡, Curtis Marantz, Chris Elphick, Don Crockett‡ 02-02). The Avian Records Committee of Connecticut has had the dubious pleasure of evaluating several reports of this species and until now has always judged that the origin of this fairly popular avicultural species is difficult to ascertain. This bird is common in captivity and the "old school" common logic was to be better safe than sorry and reject this easily identified bird, nearly out of hand, simply because the committee could not be sure that any individual was truly wild. Why then are we accepting this individual to the official state list?
The evidence: The bird appeared wild, was un-banded and had all its toes intact.
The bird occurred at the proper time for its species to be migrating and at a location that has, in the past, held other migrant waterfowl from essentially the same source location as B. leucopsis. A Pink-footed Goose, Anser brachyrhynchus, was located in this same field with an apparent Greater White-fronted Goose, Anser albifrons, of the Greenland race flavirostris on 21 March 1998 and several additional flavirostris White-fronted Geese have been there noted in each season since.
The goose was in the company of several thousand Canada Geese, Branta canadensis, including birds that had been neck-banded as migrants or as nesting birds, and the bands indicate that at least part of this migrant flock had origins in or near Greenland. This was in fact similar to evidence that allowed the committee to accept the Pink-footed Goose to the state list, the first for the Lower 48 states (see Ninth Report).
According to experts in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as well as their counterparts in Canada and Greenland, Barnacle Goose numbers are exploding on their Arctic breeding grounds, as are most other Arctic nesting geese.
According to experts in the field of aviculture, the numbers of Barnacle Geese in captivity has probably been declining through the past decade, a consequence of economic and legislative factors.
The 2002 Connecticut Barnacle Goose was part of a seemingly small invasion of the species in New England and in the Mid-Atlantic states, with several birds located in New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and even a bit farther south.
Even in the face of this voluminous circumstantial evidence, the committee acted carefully and worked diligently to not act in haste. The ARCC has at its disposal a voting category that allows us to accept a species even though we cannot definitely prove that the individual in question is wild. When the bird has been properly identified and the preponderance of the evidence seems to indicate a wild origin and there is little or no evidence to the contrary, we believe it is responsible to accept the record under our voting category, Accept - Origin Uncertain. Species accepted under this category are fully accepted onto the state list and enjoy the same status as any other bona fide vagrant. We believe that the disclaimer simply reflects the truth in a situation that is essentially unknowable.