Hi All,

Barry Saunders asked:
What is the general
> feeling among birders about including in their life lists birds one has
> heard but not seen?  Thanks!

Fran Saunders wrote:
> I don't remember where I saw it and perhaps it is just something of a
"code
> of honor" (and certainly nothing official), but I believe I read something
> like: The first sighting for any major list should be visual.  Thereafter,
> the bird can be counted if heard only.  Sounds reasonable, anyway.

The history of what birds may be counted on a life list goes back a long
way. For many years, and the entire early history of the ABA, it was the
rule that first sightings for the life list required seeing a bird. In the
mid-1990s the ABA rules were changed to allow listers to count heard-only
birds. The rationale for this was protecting secretive, nocturnal and rare
birds from undue harrassment. Birders desperate to add birds to their life
lists would blunder about in sensitive habitats (e.g. stomping salt pan
grasses seeking Black Rail), play tapes excessively in well-known spots
(e.g. the South Fork of Cave Creek Canyon for trogons), and chase birds
around until they got a "good" look at them after they had well-and-truly
identified them by their distinctive voices. So the ABA allowed birders to
count birds by sound as long as they were quite sure they had correctly
identified the vocalist and determined the sound wasn't artificial (e.g. a
recording or a skillful human imitation). To the above reasons I would add
that we were discriminating against blind birders as long as we held to this
rule; given they could never hope to see any bird on their lists. Most
people want to get a look at a bird some time in their lives, I still would
love to see the two heard-only birds on my ABA Area list - but allowing
heard-only records onto lists takes a lot of pressure of both the listers
and the birds.

Good Birding,

Walter Ellison

23460 Clarissa Road
Chestertown, MD 21620
phone: 410-778-9568
e-mail: 

"A person who is looking for something doesn't travel very fast" - E. B.
White (in "Stuart Little")

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