Hi Jeff,

I went ahead and submitted today the list of birds from Monday at the PABU spot along with the bird.  Of course, it was flagged as unusual and will need to be reviewed before being entered into the public list.  Others may have entered this and other interesting birds that have not yet been cleared, as I do not know how quickly this process is being completed.

Thanks,

Jay Keller


-----Original Message-----
>From: Jeff Shenot <>
>Sent: Feb 21, 2008 12:50 PM
>To: 
>Subject: Re: [MDOSPREY] Purple Finch - GBBC question
>
>Karen:
>
>I am surprised but pleased to hear the folks at GBBC (Cornell) have a regional 
>coordinator to ask about the GBBC reports that are submitted.  There are 
>usually some highly questionable reports that are submitted every year, 
>presumably due to a simple misidentification (i.e., raven v. crow), or else 
>someone being careless and entering their number observed in the wrong 
>square on the form.  From my feeder experience, you've got extraordinary 
>counts for both PUFI (19)  and AMGO (150); I've never seen that many of 
>either finches at a feeder, and I would gladly trade some of your 100+ finches 
>for some of our 100's of marauding blackbirds, grackles and cowbirds!!
>
>BTW, I checked MD's 2008 reports for the GBBC, and MD did very well this 
>year (138 species).  As mentioned above, the number of ravens reported is 
>probably way off (67 birds, from 20 locations - at least half of the locations 
>have probably no documented ravens observed; I know they seem to be 
>expanding their MD range, but its not to this extent).  I wonder if the GBBC 
>regional reviewers are aware of this aspect of concern, and if so I wonder 
>what their threshold is (it should only be one bird, for any reported species 
>that is not normally present or found in certain geographic locations).
>
>On the other hand, there are probably quite a few great (interesting) birds 
>that do get observed and reported to GBBC, that never get posted on 
>MDOsprey.  For example, a few interesting MD birds reported this year:
>
>96 different localities with reports of purple finches! (585 birds)
>19 different localities with reports of pine siskins (116 birds)
>4 different reports of snow buntings from PG County! (12 birds)
>1 report of lapland longspur from PG County (2 birds)
>
>Also, two interesting MD celebrity birds that were not reported but I think may 
>have been observed this weekend are the WWCR and PABU.
>
>Where I live has been pretty slow in terms of recent bird movement.  
>However, yesterday's weather seemed to stir up some change - I saw 3 
>species at our house that I had missed for the entire GBBC period (4 days) 
>last weekend (Purple Finch, YB Sapsucker, A. Tree Sparrow).
>
>Let's hope this week's weather brings in some more excitement!
>Jeff Shenot
>Croom MD
>