God willing, we'll be having the OBRC policy meeting this weekend....
If you've EVER said anything negative or constructive about the OBRC, and didn't use this chance to raise any concerns or ideas on how to improve the process - you no longer have any right to say bad things...
That's right, I said it...
A public "call out" to anyone still deciding if they should say anything... Say it! We're looking for help here people...
As one respondent said "you're trying to re-invent the wheel" - Damn right we are! And it's going to roll better than ever...
Leave a comment, or send me an email ... I'll ensure that any ideas are made topics for discussion at the policy meeting! Then it's up to the 7 voting members to decide if any changes need to be made...
I hope you're as excited about this idea as I am..
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Arctic air arrives Tuesday:
I'm not nearly as excited about this cold snap as I was last week... There's a pesky trough holding southern Ontario hostage (see map) and it really swung through in from the west - instead of directly down from the N or NW... Oh well...
It'll still be cold all week (starting to warm up early next week again)... Still can hope for some eiders or gyrs or something... Brambling is still on the 0.05% chance list.. WAY up from the usual 0.001%..
As an avid younger birder (not that young anymore) I have great interest in the overall birding atmosphere in Ontario. I`m not a big chaser, so if you haven`t met me at any of the rare bird sites, it`s because I have a great aversion to dipping. So I will admit that I have never submitted a rare bird report because in all fairness I haven`t really seen a lot of really rare birds. However I do like to read about the rare birds found in the province. I am not trying to be confrontational, I just seriously want to know. I also have some suggestions at the end.
ReplyDeleteHow does the ORBC remain relevant? If people more and more use Ebird and don`t really care if it`s the second, third, 16th, 4000th record of the bird and more and more people don`t care if the record is validated by self-appointed experts, so long as they get their lists updated, they why should they even submit to the ORBC. Other than the true twitchers and those who want to claim `first` on something, who really cares what the ORBC says on a record or why they`re even there. If it`s for scientific purposes, what`s the point for the birding community at large, where rare birds rarely have an impact on the conservational needs in their area. No one goes to the government and says we had a White-tailed Kite here so we need to preserve this place.
More and more I see only the twitchers and the advanced birders applying to the OBRC and the intermediate and beginner birders just using Ebird. I wonder if this has a lot to do with `making a name` for oneself. Most birders want to bird watch, either at a feeder or in their local patch. They want to see the rare ones, but only as a tick on their lifelists and to see the bird that would not normally be there. However the advanced birders and the twitchers use the OBRC to establish renown. Who found that Lewis`s Woodpecker? So and so did. Congrats. Now So and so is known as the guy who found the Lewis`s Woodpecker. This matters only to other advanced birders and twitchers because that means when another rare bird is spotted by them, they have street cred now with established veterans.
So my question stands, how does the OBRC remain relevant? As more and more intermediate birders and beginners use ebird this street cred system becomes more and more elitist and I use that term not in the class-system sense but in the ability-sense. That in turn may make the intermediate and beginner birders feel intimidated by the system as they see the skill of the birders submitting to the OBRC and watching their records get rejected.
One way to get more people involved is to maybe place the decisions online somewhere. It`s great and all that it`s in the birding magazine, but more and more people read on the internet. I`m not sure if you would post the results, since you want people to subscribe to your magazine, but at least the submissions. This would get the information out to the intermediate and beginner birders who might have seen the birds being submitted and might have further information to add. Even just a pdf file like what the AOU does when they make changes to the species list would be acceptable.
Another suggestion is that the OBRC put its records on Ebird. For example, Mike Burrell is doing that in my home county of Leeds-Grenville. There are birds that were found in my county that I never knew about. It`s kinda cool, but unless I had the time to go through the OBRC records I would never have known about it. Something to this effect might be done for the rest of the province. At the very least it might inspire people to go out and look for rarer birds.
This leads to my second point. As the ABA and the AOU begin to make a larger footprint, maybe the OBRC and the OFO should begin to take strides in this direction. Maybe it`s time to lead from the front instead of playing catch-up all the time.