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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Farnboro John" data-source="post: 1197833" data-attributes="member: 36432">There is nothing to stop this happening.  And it certainly does.  There is jargon covering it: to claim a bird as something else (or in extreme circumstnaces, to claim a bird that wasn't even there) is to string it, and someone with a record of such behaviour is known as a stringer.The thing is, its not worth stringing common stuff (you can always see it again), so stringers inevitably move into the realms of greater or lesser rarity according to what competition they have their eye on: the Tring reservoirs list, the Kent list, the British List.Even then, most rarities occur regularly and can be seen fairly easily so unless the stringer is after particular kudos as a finder, there's not much point.  The deepest temptations for a stringer lie when everyone else nailed something and they didn't - so they suddenly find another or (and this one happens with practically every major rarity) the bird is reported one last time by one person some hours or even days after it was last seen by a group of birders.Because of this, stringers tend to be identified by the community of birders they associate with (a long string of single observer records "oh bad luck, it just flew off" is a giveaway).  They are a pain in the a*** because they often put news out of their latest find and have all the locals haring down to the site.  Its almost the reverse of the "Cry Wolf" story - one has to go just in case the observer is telling the truth for once.Basically stringers have lost sight of the hobby aspects of birding.  To them the list becomes more important than the birds.  Madness in my view.John</blockquote>

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