Hello all, Hopefully this email is not against the group rules, but I believe this matter to be of importance to the birding community in Southern Ontario, and I hope to spark a thoughtful conversation with this email. My name is Eric Heisey, I am a recent transfer student at the University of Guelph, originally from Washington State in the US.
Yesterday, I spent much of the day birding in Niagara with a group of my friends, including well-known Ontario birders Sarah Lamond and Brandon Edwards. Our primary target for the day was the Black-headed Gull, reported on Friday. We spent much of the day searching for this bird, unsuccessfully. It was only once we had already made it to the flyby point at Niagara-on-the-Lake that we received an OntBirds alert that the bird had been refound. Curiously however, many observers were fortunate enough to observe the bird at the Whirlpool after being refound by Jean Iron. We had driven right by the Whirlpool while it was being seen, unaware of its presence due to the fact that none of our group is a member of the WhatsApp group that this bird was reported in. (Check out whatsapp.com if you are unfamiliar with the application.) The WhatsApp epidemic is an issue I had not encountered before moving to Ontario. While I understand the convenience and usefulness of these chats, especially for their utility in reporting species that may not be noteworthy enough to warrant reporting in this listserv, there is a substantial disconnect appearing here. If you are not one of the birders lucky enough to be included in these WhatsApp chats, if you are relatively new to the area like I am, if you are not as technologically savvy, you are going to miss these reports and these birds. Even my friends who are established and well-known in the Ontario birding community are apparently not of high enough esteem to be automatically considered for these chats. A fantastic example is from this morning, where Bill Lamond aptly updated OntBirds to say that the Black-headed Gull had been seen multiple times this morning without being reported to OntBirds. The fact that this is the case on perhaps the busiest gull-watching weekend of the year at Niagara, is absurd to me. I am of the opinion that OntBirds should be the FIRST place rare birds of a certain caliber are reported, not a WhatsApp clique with 50 birders in it. There are hundreds of people on this email listserv, while the maximum capacity of a WhatsApp chat is only 248 people. PLEASE, consider this! It does not take long to write a one sentence report to this listserv! (example: the Black-headed Gull is being seen now (3:30pm) at the Whirlpool.) This should be the priority if the goal is for people to see these birds! I want to bring up a couple of other issues with WhatsApp groups briefly as well. First, how can any person be expected to be an active member of the multitude of chats out there? Would it not be easier to report truly rare birds at one location instead? Again, I understand and appreciate the utility of these groups at a local scale to report more common species, but there are certain species we would all like to know about. Even since I moved here last fall, I have noticed that OntBirds has been used less and less to report rare birds. I suspect that this my be due to the increasing usage of WhatsApp chats. Second, if we are intent on a shift away from these large email groups to WhatsApp chats, we should strive to make them better known and more accessible. The fact that I am not in the main clique of Ontario birders should not mean that I, or any other, should have to miss seeing a rare and amazing bird. The goal of this email is not to condemn WhatsApp chats, rather, to figure out a solution to the disconnect between these two methods of rare bird reporting. I would love to have a productive and thought provoking conversation about this issue here. Maybe the final answer to rarity reporting isn't listservs or WhatsApp chats, maybe it is. But for the time being, I think the priority of rare bird reporting needs to be to ensure that people have the opportunity to see rare birds. To me, this means posting to this large email listserv FIRST, and secondarily to smaller WhatsApp chats. I look forward to a healthy conversation on this issue! Thank you for your time and consideration. Eric Heisey _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO) - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to birdalert@ontbirds.ca For information about ONTBIRDS including how to unsubscribe visit http://www.ofo.ca/site/page/view/information.ontbirdssetup Posting guidelines can be found at http://www.ofo.ca/site/page/view/information.ontbirdsguide Visit the OFO Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/OntarioFieldOrnithologists
