Pete Mella
Getting there...
I'm enjoying the "ticking rules" thread and I thought I'd pose another hypothetical birding quandry.
Say you're a newish birder and you're fairly confident you see a very rare bird while on your travels. However, despite your confidence, your inexperience makes you start to have nagging doubts on your ID. You haven't got a camera on you to take a picture of it, and you haven't got any more experienced birding mates you can call upon to come and check it out for you.
You're unsure whether to put the news out, as if you turn out to be wrong you risk being labelled a stringer and may get people travelling miles for nothing.
But also you don't want to NOT put the news out, as you don't want to deny people the chance to see a rarity.
What would you do? Which is the worse crime - potentially stringing a rarity you'd IDed wrong, or supressing a rarity you IDed correctly?
Say you're a newish birder and you're fairly confident you see a very rare bird while on your travels. However, despite your confidence, your inexperience makes you start to have nagging doubts on your ID. You haven't got a camera on you to take a picture of it, and you haven't got any more experienced birding mates you can call upon to come and check it out for you.
You're unsure whether to put the news out, as if you turn out to be wrong you risk being labelled a stringer and may get people travelling miles for nothing.
But also you don't want to NOT put the news out, as you don't want to deny people the chance to see a rarity.
What would you do? Which is the worse crime - potentially stringing a rarity you'd IDed wrong, or supressing a rarity you IDed correctly?