Hi Bob. et al.:
The modern records committee was formed in 1983, thanks to Jim
Stasz's efforts. Later, the DC Records Committee went defunct and
under the Chair leadership of the late Claudia Wilds, the MOS
"adopted" the District of Columbia, primarily to provide a local
venue for the review and subsequent acceptance of a North American
first, the Yellow-legged Gull. So now we are the MD/DC Records Committee.
It took the committee a few years to publish a stable "review list"
so many rare sightings that occurred between the publication of the
MD state baseline (Stewart and Robbins, 1958) and well into the 1980s
we not pursued or reviewed. One of my on-going tasks is to research
and locate all reviewable sightings that were never captured by,
submitted to, or considered by the MD/DCRC. I'm glad to report that
I'm probably 90+ percent done with this task.
Your suggestions are good ones. One of my requirements is that all
committee reports be generated by my report writer directly from the
database; that way, we maintain one set of "ground truth." The beauty
of a relational database is that I can produce just about any type of
information in any format. I'll work your suggestions into my next
round of reports. For something like the Kelp Gull, your suggestions
are straightforward; however, when you consider species like
Ash-throated Flycatcher, or Sooty Tern, the issue of how many records
exist becomes problematic, since I want to apply the same algorithms
to the data elements for all species. Hence my task to capture all
historical records. We have developed a numerical system that
provides a short-hand status consisting of the number of records
accepted, not-accepted, unreviewable, etc. but again, this type of
system requires a solid foundation of the reports and records that
exist so we have not implemented it yet. (We use "records" to refer
to the subset of reports that are either from the Stewart and Robbins
baseline or have been accepted by the committee; all other reports,
such as those published but not submitted, those not accepted, etc.
are all considered to be "reports.")
Now, having said all of that, in the specific case of the Kelp Gull,
I always remind everyone that abridged versions of the MD and DC
databases are available on our web pages (abridged in that only a
small number the total data fields are presented).
So, to find the end date for the Sandgates Kelp Gull, here's what to do ...
On our web pages, here ...
http://www.mdbirds.org/mddcrc/rcindex.html
... take the link for the MD database base ...
http://www.mdbirds.org/mddcrc/pdf/mddatabase.pdf
... this is currently a large PDF document (don't print it!), but do
a find/search for "kelp" and you will be taken to the database entry
for the Kelp Gull. It shows the end date as 03/20/2005.
There is a wealth of information out there for all to use!
I hope this helps.
Thanks, again for the good ideas and your interest in the committee.
Phil
At 17:59 02/04/2007, Bob Hartman wrote:
>Hi All - Taylor's note prompted me to take a look at this web site,
>which has a lot of good stuff. One thing I looked at was the MD
>Official List, both ornithological and chronological order. I have
>a question and a suggestion concerning the latter:
>
>Question: Apparently the list was generated in 1958 by Stewart &
>Robbins, but there were no species added to the list between 1958
>and 1985. Was 1985 when the MD/DCRC was formed?
>
>Suggestion: In the chronological list, I think a lot of people would
>find it useful to see, for species that have occurred only once or
>twice, the first and last dates the bird was seen. For example, the
>Sandgates Kelp Gull was accepted in 2003, but I saw it in early
>1999, and it may have been here in late 1998. Not sure when it was
>last seen, but I believe it was after 2003.
===================================================
Phil Davis, Secretary
MD/DC Records Committee
2549 Vale Court
Davidsonville, Maryland 21035 USA
301-261-0184
mailto:[log in to unmask]
MD/DCRC Web site: http://www.MDBirds.org/mddcrc/rcindex.html
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