What is a "tick" (1 Viewer)

[RichardBaatsen]

I would hate to find a bird in a photograph I took that I did not know was there. I would not tick it.
A tick for me, is a bird I can identify, optical aids and cameras (sound recordings) are ok to use. but I have to be able to ID.

Its personal

 

[Zheljko]

Fascinating thread - that scenario has happened to me a couple of times, but when not photographing birds. Both times were when photographing archaeological sites, one in Cyprus and one in Crete. The birds in question were Woodlark and Crested Lark. I didn't notice them (being archaeologically site coloured) until examine the pics back in the UK. Fortunately I'd seen plenty of both species so wasn't tempted to record them as ticks, but if I hadn't - well, I don't really know.

When I posted some pics on facebook, people told me "wow, you even captured a crow on that post" a few times. I haven't noticed the crows until they were mentioned - there are so many of them that it would be like noticing that a boat or a car or a tree was in the picture, which is normal for a city riverbank site - I actually took the photos as a photographic evidence of how high the water level was during the floods.

 

[stuartvine]

I think the real crux of the matter is why do individuals collect lists/ticks? Is it for their own personal satisfaction, in which case any methodology that doesn't conflict with their conscience is surely OK? If however you want your lists to be public and open to scrutiny and criticism, hell, if you want to boast about them even, then perhaps you may need to be really strict with your criteria.

So, here's another scenario. I get home and look at my photographs and notice a wader I hadn't actually seen. Let's assume I am the Einstein of wader ID (I really, really am not) and conclusively ID it as a Surfbird (NOT common in the UK if any readers in the Americas are thinking WTF, see them every day). Now, if I can't count it, can I tell anyone else it exists and where it is?

 

[Nutcracker]

So, here's another scenario. I get home and look at my photographs and notice a wader I hadn't actually seen. Let's assume I am the Einstein of wader ID (I really, really am not) and conclusively ID it as a Surfbird (NOT common in the UK if any readers in the Americas are thinking WTF, see them every day). Now, if I can't count it, can I tell anyone else it exists and where it is?

You might not want to count it for yourself, but you could (and certainly should, if it ever happened!) submit the details to the BBRC and BOURC as Britain's first record of a Surfbird :t:




Another definition of a tick that has been overlooked . . . a nasty blood-sucking arachnid :-O

 

[stuartvine]

You might not want to count it for yourself, but you could (and certainly should, if it ever happened!) submit the details to the BBRC and BOURC as Britain's first record of a Surfbird :t:




Another definition of a tick that has been overlooked . . . a nasty blood-sucking arachnid :-O

Heh - I know and I would! Just trying to gently undermine a few certainties Oh, I didn't even see a Surfbird in Costa Rica :C

 

[ovenbird43]

I agree 100% on the first point but personally I am less sold on the second statement. Would it matter if the birds were the same species? Suppose you photograph a tree containing what you think by eye is 3 birds of the same species. When you get the photo on a computer with a larger, clearer screen than that of your camera you see there are actually 4 birds (of the same species) in the image. Did you see 3 or 4 birds?

I would argue in this scenario that the person saw 3 birds, even though there were actually 4. To me, "seeing" means more than light hitting the retinas - it is also the brain processing the image, filtering the data into objects, and creating a conscious understanding of the view. In the same way, the OP did not "see" the bird in question until later, when he uploaded the photo. I personally wouldn't tick it, because I would have only seen it in a photo, even if I was the one who took the photo - I wouldn't have seen it in the field.

I propose my own analogy - say you're birding with a guide, and the guide points out a well-camouflaged bird up in a tree - maybe a roosting nightjar hiding in plain sight. Even though light is bouncing off the bird and hitting your retinas, you wouldn't count it until you successfully locate the bird, right? You wouldn't count it just because you were looking in the general direction and knew, from the guide, that one was present.

Obviously to each one's own... but that's my reasoning :t:

 

[mathare]

I propose my own analogy - say you're birding with a guide, and the guide points out a well-camouflaged bird up in a tree - maybe a roosting nightjar hiding in plain sight. Even though light is bouncing off the bird and hitting your retinas, you wouldn't count it until you successfully locate the bird, right? You wouldn't count it just because you were looking in the general direction and knew, from the guide, that one was present.

Been there, done that, know exactly what you mean and in such a situation I wouldn't tick it, you're right.

This thread is very much one of personal opinions so I want to take the discussion slightly further with another scenario. Some people (not me, yet) record bird counts rather than just species seen. I regularly look on the official website for a local site I bird as often as I can to see what recent sightings there have been. I have seen entries such as "c500 Swifts". Obviously there is a margin of error attached to this figure but how large is anyone's guess. Going back to my 3 birds v 4 birds photo from earlier, one can use said photo to more accurately ascertain how many birds were present so where numbers matter should one intentionally use the 'wrong' figure that one saw (3) or the number that were actually there (4)? Proper birding places can record inaccurate figures (such as the c500 Swifts example above) but where we can make our data more accurate shouldn't we do so?

I know this may all be semantics and whatever but I genuinely find such arguments interesting. Maybe it's the scientist in me

 

[Peter C.]

I have seen entries such as "c500 Swifts". Obviously there is a margin of error attached to this figure but how large is anyone's guess. Going back to my 3 birds v 4 birds photo from earlier, one can use said photo to more accurately ascertain how many birds were present so where numbers matter should one intentionally use the 'wrong' figure that one saw (3) or the number that were actually there (4)? Proper birding places can record inaccurate figures (such as the c500 Swifts example above) but where we can make our data more accurate shouldn't we do so?

I think we should, but it's rather tricky to do. I volunteer at bird observatories from time to time, and this issue definitely comes up. We see large flocks of swallows (or martins, if you prefer) of several species - sometimes over 20,000 birds at a time - coming in to roost at a marsh from the stations at LPBO.

The human eye and brain are probably very poorly equipped to get anything like an accurate number of them, so wouldn't it be great to take an image and count the dots on the image? (Some sort of sampling and extrapolation could probably be applied to this). The problem I see, though, is that the camera isn't able to keep track of the flock temporally - the flock is not going to be all "in the frame" at once. A human observer is able, albeit roughly, to keep track of the total overall number that disappear into the marsh over the time that the flock takes to go to roost. No doubt some kind of video camera, and some clever pattern-recognition software could be devised to tackle the problem, but it wouldn't be trivial (or, I imagine, cheap!).

BTW, it's an amazing sight to see that many birds swirl around, and then disappear - highly recommend it.

 

[ovenbird43]

Going back to my 3 birds v 4 birds photo from earlier, one can use said photo to more accurately ascertain how many birds were present so where numbers matter should one intentionally use the 'wrong' figure that one saw (3) or the number that were actually there (4)? Proper birding places can record inaccurate figures (such as the c500 Swifts example above) but where we can make our data more accurate shouldn't we do so?

I know this may all be semantics and whatever but I genuinely find such arguments interesting. Maybe it's the scientist in me

In this case I would count 4 vs. 3 birds - but here the aim is different. You saw three birds, but knew there were 4 present. I see this as the same as counting heard-only birds on daily checklists, i.e. ascertaining presence by means other than live visual observation. I would include the OP's surprise bird if I were submitting an eBird checklist, because it IS a form a detection, but I wouldn't claim to have "seen" it.

This same conundrum applies to those who include heard-only species on day lists, trip lists, etc. but not their life lists (personally I'm in between - I add some heard-onlys to my life list, but generally only cryptic species such as screech-owls where if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all)

 

[davercox]

I would include the OP's surprise bird if I were submitting an eBird checklist, because it IS a form a detection, but I wouldn't claim to have "seen" it.

Agree. You could end up submitting a perfectly good record of a species you've never seen (in the sense of being able to tick it), which is weird but consistent.

 

[wolfbirder]

If the OP cannot even recall a second bird being present, that is the defining issue for me. Don't tick it. If he recalls a second bird being present but didnt really look at it, then I suppose it is ok to id it belatedly. Its your own choice of course.

Personally I don't think it is critical to be able to i/d a bird at the time, as long as you know you have seen the bird in question. I saw the Filey Brigg Two-barred Greenish Warbler, but left not sure what it was, possibly thinking Arctic Warbler. I was the 2nd birder to see it, and neither of us initially were sure (though in fairness to the finder I think he possibly harboured that opinion). But it is on my list (as a subspecies of Greenish obviously). I saw it well.

I hear of some birders not counting the Yorkshire Amur Falcon because they thought it was a RF Falcon at the time. For me, that is cheating yourself, unless your list is what you identified, not what you saw.

 

[Trystan]

If the OP cannot even recall a second bird being present, that is the defining issue for me. Don't tick it. If he recalls a second bird being present but didnt really look at it, then I suppose it is ok to id it belatedly. Its your own choice of course.

Personally I don't think it is critical to be able to i/d a bird at the time, as long as you know you have seen the bird in question. I saw the Filey Brigg Two-barred Greenish Warbler, but left not sure what it was, possibly thinking Arctic Warbler. I was the 2nd birder to see it, and neither of us initially were sure (though in fairness to the finder I think he possibly harboured that opinion). But it is on my list (as a subspecies of Greenish obviously). I saw it well.

I hear of some birders not counting the Yorkshire Amur Falcon because they thought it was a RF Falcon at the time. For me, that is cheating yourself, unless your list is what you identified, not what you saw.

This sums it up for me too.

 

[Nightranger]

I don't see a problem with ticking a bird under these circumstances given how much we rely on optics anyway. Be honest is the OP's situation really (I mean REALLY) different from scanning the far side of a reservoir/lake/bay and resolving a Temminck's stint? Try as you might, squinting without optics you cannot see the bird so you have relied entirely on optics. As other contributors have said, lists are personal things anyway and not many are put up for public consumption. Even where lists are published I know of at least three prominent listers who have 'stretched' rules for their own benefit.

 

[Jane Turner]

Its an interesting one this... in terms of where do you draw the line. Most people seem happy with the line drawn somewhere between "seen through optics" and discovered retrospectively in a photograph.

In the blurry region we have "seen and identified retrospectively in a photo" - which seems to building a level of support as in the ok to tick to tick.

On the other side I could easily have a "seen in a live web cam feed but not through optics". I got close to this last year (with a peep on my computer which I eventually found with more conventional means (and it was a Semi P). Now that one I couldn't I'd past being a stint/peep as it ran through the web cam's field of view - the web cam being an electronic eyepiece in a scope, but has it been say a Caspian Tern, or something as instantly identifiable and I'd not managed to sprint upstairs and relocate it... then it would be an interesting case

 

[Bird_Bill]

What are the standards for the latency of a tick?
Was going over a card last fall, from an old Point & Shoot, prior to reformatting it.
Seen an Ovenbird, that I had shot in October 2009, thinking it was Swainson's thrush
that was in the yard at the same time. Could the Ovenbird be included in my yard list?

 

[Jane Turner]

If it were me - Ovenbird would be on the garden list - but not on my garden list

 

[Nightranger]

On the other side I could easily have a "seen in a live web cam feed but not through optics". I got close to this last year (with a peep on my computer which I eventually found with more conventional means (and it was a Semi P). Now that one I couldn't I'd past being a stint/peep as it ran through the web cam's field of view - the web cam being an electronic eyepiece in a scope, but has it been say a Caspian Tern, or something as instantly identifiable and I'd not managed to sprint upstairs and relocate it... then it would be an interesting case

For me it is a clearer line in that I feel if a person is present and has actively seen the bird one way or another then I think it is fair enough. In the OP's case, the bird was photographed so he was in the presence of the bird and not remote. The other side of the coin is that I would not tick (I don't need to anyway) ospreys at Loch Garten or seabirds at South Stack on the reserve webcams without lifting my binoculars at the very least. In fact in Elin's Tower the birds that the webcam shows are not visible from the building so it is a remote view. As I said, I know of circumstances where listers have seen a bird heading towards (but not crossing) a county boundary and ticking it for the county. I accept the probabilities but the occasion I witnessed, the bird did not fly across the border because I happened to be on the other side. By the same token, if I was stood in one county viewing a bird in another county I would not claim it for where I was standing, yet I know some who would. Another scenario, I wonder how many people have ticked dots that were identified by someone else? At the end of the day, if we are all honest and play to the strictest of rules we would end up having to delete half our lists. :-C

 

[Peter C.]

If it were me - Ovenbird would be on the garden list - but not on my garden list

That's my feeling too. "The garden list" is about the habitat, and what it attracts, and doesn't matter whether I am there or not (a webcam image could be used, for example). But if I kept a "personal" garden list, it would be like a subset of my life list, and I wouldn't count it.

Peter

 

[mathare]

This has proved quite an interesting and enlightening discussion, for me at least. I have to admit at the start of it I hadn't considered 'official' lists as recorded by county recorders, birding groups etc. My list is just for me to know what I have 'seen' and where and while I am happy to share it with others it's not something that is ever intended to be an official record of anything. But I can see that the purpose of the list can heavily influence the criteria for a tick.

 

[Bird_Bill]

If it were me - Ovenbird would be on the garden list - but not on my garden list

That's my feeling too. "The garden list" is about the habitat, and what it attracts, and doesn't matter whether I am there or not (a webcam image could be used, for example). But if I kept a "personal" garden list, it would be like a subset of my life list, and I wouldn't count it.

Peter

So it is. Objectivity at the forefront of even an informal & personal list. Appreciate the mention of habitat. Two tornados since then, removing two 60 year old Sugar Maples that played a large symbiotic roll in the yard. Another member here, articulating the context of a list & tick, vitally important, contributes much to the discussion. My informal notes and jotting down for 4, Oct. 2009 having an addendum of just one Swainson's thrush seen. And an asterisk.