Rare Birds

by Mike Stiles

Finding a rare bird is every birder's dream. It is very exciting to see a rare one, and if one is seen, calls and emails go out, other birders show up to see your bird, and your name may go on the record books. If "your" bird is one of the mega-rarities, seen only a handful of times (or better yet, never seen before) in your county or state or even the continent, the excitement level ramps up accordingly.

Every serious birder has seen it happen, and it's a scene to remember . . . the first North American sighting of the Little Curlew that showed up in a field in Santa Maria that was found while searching for another reported rare bird; California's presumed 4th Nutting's Flycatcher, that turned out to be a common look-alike, San Luis Obispo County's first Ivory Gull, a bird of the arctic ice pack, and only the second in California . . . all drew huge crowds of birders from around the country, who have the time (and money) to drop whatever it is they're doing and fly across the country to take a look at the bird.

What is truly amazing is that these birds were ever found at all. The curlew sighting was a complete accident, the flycatcher happened to show up in a neighborhood where a birder happened upon it, and the gull was photographed by someone who didn't know what it was and showed it to a birder to identify. It's obvious that most of this country (or even your neighborhood) is un-birded, and to be at the right tree at the right time begs the question we all invariably ask, "If this bird was found, how many ultra-rarities go unseen every year?"

This point was hit home recently in our area, when a Red-flanked Bluetail was found in early December on San Clemente Island, one of the channel islands off California's coast. The bird breeds from Finland to Siberia and spends its winters in southern China and Indonesia.  It's even rare to the westernmost Aleutian Islands, and was North America's second record of the species, away from Alaska. San Clemente harbors a navy installation and is off-limits to the public, so no one could chase the bird, but the sighting generated a lot of email traffic nonetheless.

Of course the big question arose, and a northern California birder put it best when he said " . . . probabilities point to more than this one (Bluetail) being in California's airspace at the moment.  . . . What percentage of birds in our airspace at this moment has actually been seen in their lifetimes by a human eye or even a birder's eye that can ID it? Way less than 1% probably. . . ." 

It is exactly that thought, the possibility that the mega-rarity may be in the next bush we look at, that keeps many of us going out into the field.

I should make one thing clear. When I say there is one record of a certain species in the state, I really mean one accepted record. The California Bird Records Committee (CBRC), comprised of ten of the best birders in the state, maintains what is called the "review list." Birds on this list average less than four occurrences a year, and require documentation to be accepted into the official California bird list.

If you want your bird reviewed, you must submit a detailed description of the bird to the committee. A copy of the description form can be found on the CBRC website.  In this digital age, a photograph will go a long way to decide if a bird is accepted or not. Each member of the CBRC will evaluate the evidence and vote to accept or deny the sighting, and then pass it on to the next member. A bird can be denied acceptance for two reasons, either because the identification was not established, or the natural occurrence of the bird is questionable. Some birds in the state have been deemed to be escaped cage birds or their occurrence here has been aided by humans, for example a gull arriving to the state on board a ship.

A bird will be accepted if no more than one member votes to deny the sighting, and a submission may make several rounds through the committee before a decision is made. The CBRC tends to "err" on the conservative side, and believes it is better to reject a good sighting than to accept a bad one.  As you can imagine, a rejected bird sighting can be very frustrating to the submitter.

—A couple of footnotes to the Bluetail story. The bird was later found dead, beheaded by a Loggerhead Shrike, and the San Clemente Island subspecies of the shrike is also very rare. I'll need to consult a statistician to figure out those odds. And secondly, a Falcated Duck, California's third record of that bird showed up about the same time near Sacramento, and gave the frustrated chasers something to chase.

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