A friend and I were chatting about what's countable on your ABA list and what's not. I realized that I might have been following some different rules all these years.
Later that day Michael Retter posted a similar question on the ABA Blog in response to a Winging It article (which I don't have).
Instead of clogging the ABA Blog comments section with my measly incoherent thoughts, I figured I would use my blog to try to put down into words what I've done about this issue in the past.
The main question I've been pondering is "When can I add a recently-established exotic on my ABA list?".
An example would be the Common Mynas that are now abundant in Florida. I remember visiting the Miami area and seeing this species many years before it was officially on the ABA and Florida list. I didn't count it then. Years later it was accepted onto the ABA checklist as countable. Ok, now what? Should I have added Common Myna to my ABA list then?
My belief was "no". I thought I needed to see them AFTER they became ABA countable in order to count them.
The story with the Nanday (Black-hooded) Parakeet is nearly the same for me. I saw it ages ago in Florida (at a nest-hole, even) but since it wasn't on the ABA checklist, I didn't add it. Now that it IS on the official checklist, should I add it now or wait until I see it again? If my rules are in fact wrong, this would be a very important "armchair lifer".
The term "armchair lifer" is not new to me or to many birders. I always thought I could gain a lifer if a species is SPLIT into additional species (and only if I had seen the aforementioned subspecies and took note of them). An example of this would be the Solitary Vireo complex. Since I had noted the "Plumbeous" subspecies before they were split, the resulting "armchair lifer" was obviously Plumbeous Vireo in addition to the Blue-headed Vireo (being an eastern boy, Cassin's Vireo came later for me).
In other words, I thought splits and exotics had different rules. How wrong is this?
4 comments:
I think ticking armchair exotics is legit, assuming you saw them within the boundaries of established populations and its in a time frame that made sense. If I saw a myna in Key West a day/week/month before they were officially listable, I cant imagine feeling the need to go back again to see one. As far as I know state committees/the ABA have pretty arbitrary timelines when it comes to officially accepting exotics anyways.
Thanks for your thoughts. What time frame would make sense? Is there a limit? Seeing a Common Myna 2 years earlier? Or a Nanday Parakeet 8 years earlier?
There is no existing time limit, but a time frame that makes sense is deatable. I think it depends largely on when the birds first showed up. For example, if parakeets were first reported from an area in 1990, and you saw a couple them in 1993, there is a good chance that that they were adults that came straight out of a cage somewhere. If these sightings happened in 2008, the likelihood of those birds being original escapees would be very low.
*debatable
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