Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Twisting the ABA rules

Only a few fortunate (are they really?) birders can afford to spend extensive stretch of time on the field, seeking to break either bid day or big year records, travelling all over the world, continent or even state to add the latest rarity.
The rest of us, the vast majority, simply restrict their "competing territory" to a smaller area, such as counties, township, or even backyard. We are enjoying the discovering of a Connecticut warbler in our backyard just as much as a birder with unlimited fund and time (and carbon credits, in the future years) would enjoy to fly 3000 miles away to find a fan-tailed warbler in New Mexico
All of these birders, despite their difference, share common rules. In order to "count", an observation should follow the 5 ABA rules :

(1) The bird must have been within the prescribed area and time-period when encountered.

(2) The bird must have been a species currently accepted by the ABA Checklist Committee for lists within its
area, or by the A.O.U. Checklist for lists outside the ABA area and within the A.O.U. area, or by Clements for all other areas.

(3) The bird must have been alive, wild, and unrestrained when encountered.

(4) Diagnostic field-marks for the bird, sufficient to identify to species, must have been seen and/or heard and/or documented by the recorder at the time of the encounter.

(5) The bird must have been encountered under conditions that conform to the ABA Code of Birding Ethics.
This brings me to this crucial question, whose answer depend the well being of thousands of cubicle birders

What's about the webcams?

Nowhere in these rules I found anything that prevents me to add on my life list a species seen on a webcam . Rule 1 specify the location of the bird, not the observer, rule 2, 3 and 4 are irrelevant, and rule 5 is actually a lot in favor on this particular form of twitching, because you actually don't use any fossil-based fuel to see the bird.

One might argue that "encountered" specified in rule 1) actually imply being physically present to observe the bird.

Are you kidding?

Why could you count a bird you see through the EVF (electronic view finder) of your digital camera, and not count a bird you see through a webcam? In both cases, you only see the visual representation of a numerical signal. Only difference is the length of the cable between your eye and the bird.

Plus, nobody said that "encounter" meant "in real life", rather that "virtually". Nowadays, lots of people meet virtually "friends" who live thousand of miles away, thanks to social networking websites such as facebook. So I think a webcam based encounter is indeed a real encounter.

That opens a new world of possibilities, isn't it?

Are you missing the stellar's jay to your life list?

look at a feeding station in California, and here we are!


You are short in cash, but think you can identify every single one of the 136 species of hummingbirds that can be found in equator? For this check the buenaventura webcam in Ecuador! The quality of the streamed video is really good

While looking at that webcam, I was able to find a bird I could recognize and identify (well at least I think) : the green jay! That's one more lifer on my list!

You feel a little bit overwhelmed by the number of hummingbirds? I am too (I need to find a book about South American birds before to really work on that one). So I choose to take a short trip to Antartica , because I need a few penguins on my list


More realistically, I obviously don't think using webcams is fair game. At the very best I might think about starting a list with birds only seen on webcams. But it's a great way to learn about birds, specially if you are in your office! (I remember that Jochen was playing another time killing game, involving some sort of a geo-google earth birding bingo)

5 comments:

Nate said...

I agree that webcams should be out of bounds. I'm not even square on photos of bird I identify later, but I know people who are.

And that green bird is a Green Honeycreeper.

Jochen said...

"It's your list"

That simple. If you feel you should be allowed to count birds seen on webcams - fine, its yours. You might not find others willing to participate in that kind of listing and fellow "conventional" listers might not accept your addition of Steller's Jay to your Washtenaw county list if based on having seen the bird by webcam from California in your Ann Arbor apartment, but hey, even a lone competition is still a competition!

Ha.

Okay, I am sure everyone will agree that webcams don't count and that this shouldn't be the case even if logically there is no (or not much of a) difference to viewing a bird through your digital camera out in the field, except for cable length.
So many things about listing/twitching aren't very logical, like e.g. counting a bird seen on a body of water that's shared by two counties for both counties, even if the bird was clearly (off-shore) on just one county side.
It is also not logic to see an un-countable California Condor now and in the (hopefully not so very far) future, after the species is considered re-established, you have to go and see THE SAME BIRD again, just because now all of a sudden, the same individual bird in the same area is countable.

look, it's just a game, and game rules are made for the fun of it, not for being logic.

Laurent said...

Damnit, Nate is right about the Honeycreeper. It also make more sense, since he was feeding at a hummingbird feeder. Now I am looking for a book about south american birds.....

He Jochen, my Stellar's Jay should obviously not be on my Michigan list, since that's the position of the bird that counts, not the observer. So it should be on my california webcam list.

Hilke Breder said...

Now I know why I am not interested in keeping lists. It's just a numbers game. I'd rather shoot for a good photo than a checkmark on a list.

By the way, I am getting great landscape photos with the Lumix, and it's easy to carry along with my rather heavy DSLR.

premium custom writing said...

don't get a reason to twised it?? explain plaese, hmm....