Greetings,

Unfortunately my first, and much lengthier version of this post was lost, so here we go again….

Tonight while going over the website and what pages need updating, I came upon our “Website of the Month Week” page. Here, I discovered that a lot of pages have never made the list due to simply not keeping up with the weekly additions. However, while mulling over what to do about this situation, I clicked on the last website added to the list which is David Sibley’s Notebook, a great blog from this ornithological giant.

With many great additions to his blog since I last looked I didn’t know where to begin, and read it all in order and wasn’t disappointed. While there are many fine threads to get lost within, one of the most interesting to me was a thread regarding the number of rare birds ever detected in North America (or anywhere for that matter). Certainly this is not referring to a finite number, but rather a percentage of rare birds that are ever detected once they are within North America’s borders. This thread caught my attention as it is something I have given much thought to on my own in the past. Part of my interest in this topic is is because of the fact that I have lived in several of the birdiest regions of the country including Point Reyes, CA and Cape May, NJ, two of David Sibley’s old hometowns as well!

While I will leave my full thoughts on this topic to a later date with hopes to turn it into a full article, I highly suggest everyone to read David’s thoughts on this topic as well as his remarks on The Birdlist’s own thoughts as well. A very interesting and very thought provoking subject!

Bird on!
Chad