Karen,

You need to understand that this is an exceptional year for Purple Finches in the region and 19 is a very good number. I'm not sure if it's programmed into the system to generate a request for verication or if it was due just to human intervention. My guess is it's a programmed trigger that alerted the coordinator to your number. The programmers usually set triggers based on the mean as a basis and this year far exceeds the mean by a long shot. Another somewhat related example is e-bird which is programmed to ask you to verify Black-capped Chickadees that you may report from Garrett County but will not question a Carolina, even if this would be a remarkable report and Black-caps are the expected species. 

It is interesting that they failed to question 150 Goldfinches. It makes me wonder what number would trigger that. 

Ed Boyd
Westminster, MD

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> Like others I participated in the Backyard birdcount this weekend. 
> After entering my data today I received an email from a regional 
> coordinator asking me about one of my counts. It seems my 19 purple 
> finches was very high, not my 150 goldfinches. I would like to know out 
> of curiosity if anyone else has that kind of number of purple finches. 
> I count for the Feederwatch program and usually have weekly counts 
> between 8 and 14, today being 9 with only 20 goldfinches (they were 
> finally hitting someone else for a change). 
> 
> Thanks, 
> Karen Harris 
> Easton, MD 
>  
>