[mou] accidental? You've got to be kidding (long)

[M. Thomas Auer]

Go Bob!

I'm with you on this issue. I'm not completely versed on the King Rail in Minnesota, but I do believe that pushing the bird to Accidental in the state is a bit too far. The same goes for the Gyr.

I think it would be much appreciated if the Records Committee issued a statement supporting their actions with evidence and reason, so that we may have some idea behind their motives.

Tom Auer
Duluth, MN

--------- Original Message ---------
DATE: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 23:08:34
From: Wildchough@aol.com
To: mnbird@lists.mnbird.net, mou-net@cbs.umn.edu
Cc: 

I think this Minnesota rarities committee has been locked up in a Koochiching cabin way too long this winter.  Let the suns shine in men and women!! To call a King Rail "accidental" is to treat records of this species like some of the truly accidental records that dot the annals of the birding world, great records like a Slender-billed Curlew in New York or a Skua in North Dakota or a Manx Shearwater on a lawn in Michigan.  Accidental means not likely to occur again, an "accident" of nature.  The great Ontario birder Alan Wormington says there is no such thing as "accidental."  History will repeat itself eventually.  A record of King Rail in Minnesota which breeds in Wisconsin, breeds in Iowa, may breed in South Dakota and definitely breeds in Nebraska is hardly an "accident."  For crying outloud like a nocturnal petrel, this is a rail folks!  Rails can populate the most remote islands in the far reaches of the world's oceans so for a King Rail to appear again in Minnesota is
  h
ardly accidental.  How does a bird go from breeding in the state within the past 2 or 3 decades to accidental?  Did it suddenly change its nature?  So it's gotten rarer but the continued possibilities of future records is relatively high.  And then there's the detectability issue.  How many birders in this state ever get out of their SUVs and walk more than 200 yards from the car?  How many boat, canoe, kayak records have birders turned in recently? Almost none.  Does anyone go out and walk through marshes, as any thorough check of the big Mississippi marsh south of LaCrescent been made by boat recently?  Have the marshes of Lac qui Parle been checked other than a brief drive down the roads that lead through the refuge.  Have tapes been played regularly in the early morning and evening?  Is the aged BBS birding population even capable of hearing a distant "bup, bup?"  And there's the gyr demoted to casual.  Let's see 20 records in Illinois in the past 35 years.  Did all these
  b
irds just fly around Minnesota.  How many folks sit at Grand Portage for 2 months doing a real hawklookout, who birds Koochiching and Kittson and Lake of the Woods on a regular basis?  Who checks the chicken flocks regularly in western MN?  South Dakota gets multiple gyrs every year and most of these records are 200 miles south of Minnesota's Canadian border.  Certainly there are gyrs in Minnesota every year.  What good does it do the list to periodically downgrade a species every decade or so and then put it back on the regular list when a series of records demands it?  Why not calm down, admit that species like Red-throated Loons, jaegers, gyrs, and many other boreal/arctic species are cyclic and go with the flow rather than trying to pigeonhole these birds which still are "regular" over a period of, say 50-60 years or more.  Not every invasion occurs every 2 years or even every 10 years in boreal ecosystems.  We have much to learn of northern invasions and it makes no sens
 e 
to change their status just to make work for the records committee although it does keep this records committee out of the woods and out of our hair for extended periods and I guess that's good.  I feel better now.  We'll make Bobwhite comments later!  Bob Russell, Dakota County, proud home to at least 2 records committee members. 



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