The Secrets Kept By Birders
The birding community is a generous one. People share notable sightings, often with precise GPS locations, so that others can go see the bird they found. They give tips about the best spots to find local specialties. A group called LA Birders has produced a series of video guides to area hotspots. Whether it’s on eBird, iNaturalist, WhatsApp, Discord, Youtube, an old-fashioned email group list, or chatting in the field, birders are constantly sharing information with other birders.
That said, there are times when birders don’t share information. Instead of immediately and enthusiastically spreading news of their finds, birders will keep mum. Or they’ll enter a report in eBird and hide the checklist from public view. Sometimes, eBird itself will suppress the information about the sighting. What in the name of classified top secrets is going on here?
Possible members of a secret cabal that keeps their good finds to themselves
On rare occasions, the secrecy is selfish. Birders are obsessed with their lists. A hobby so focused on counting can easily lead to competitive, ungenerous behavior. While falsely reporting a rare bird that you didn’t actually see is much more common (for nefarious, or benign reasons), it does happen that people will intentionally withhold information about a bird sighting. This is undoubtedly the worst form of a birding secret. I’ve heard it called rarity hoarding. The aim, as sad as it is to say out loud, is to get a bird on your list that nobody else will get on their list.
I don’t think this actually happens all that much. For starters, if you never report the bird, it won’t be reflected in your eBird life list. And if it’s not on your eBird life list, you want go up in the rankings. If, on the other hand, you first report it a week after you saw it, one of two things will follow. Either (1) if you have no supporting documentation, you will have no credibility, and we’ll assume you didn’t see it, or (2) if you have good documentation, birders will despise you for not passing along the news. Whether it is #1 or #2, anyone who does this should be shamed and shunned.
A related kind of secrecy is the fabled secret cabal – a select few who share early information about rarities through backchannel communications that aren’t publicly available. Every birding community has legends of some inner circle of birders who get all the juicy reports first. I certainly think this happens. But in the days of eBird and iNaturalist, reports find their way to the rest of us pretty quickly.
Big purple boxes and a notice is all you get for Spotted Owl in Los Angeles
Most birding secrets are kept for good reasons: to benefit birds. One example is the suppressed location information for certain sensitive species in eBird. “Sensitive species” are those “for which demonstrable harm could occur from public display of site-level records, including (but not limited to): 1) targeted capture for the cage bird trade; 2) targeted hunting; 3) targeted disturbance of nests, roosts, or individual birds from birdwatchers or photographers.” This means that eBird reports for these birds will not show up in eBird except for big purple blocks that show the general area of a sighting. In Los Angeles, this includes Spotted Owl and Long-Eared Owl.
Another kind of secret is the sighting that never gets into eBird in the first place. Motivated by similar concerns over the health, well-being of, or disturbance to a particular bird, some birders will simply not share their sighting. Many naturalists and conservationists rue the impact the Ebird has had on many bird populations. They’d rather folks went out and enjoyed nature and saw birds, and didn’t create pubic records with precise time and location data. Some advocate for not sharing rare bird sightings, to avoid the crowds of nerds stalking wayward birds.
My current birding secret
I’ve kept these kind of secrets in the past a couple of times. A few years ago I got special permission to walk around an ecological reserve in my 5MR and saw 4 Burrowing Owls. I see one or two annually, so this wasn’t a rarity that would attract the listers. But this was a high count. And it was just before breeding season. To minimize any disturbance (which I mainly figured would come from photographers), I kept the report to myself for a month, when the birds had all left.
I’m keeping a birding secret right now. It’s nothing big, and none of the listers will be upset once it’s disclosed. But it’s possible some folks will be disappointed.