Listing advice for feral birds... (1 Viewer)

[lazza]

I posted this on the London local thread last week, but so far, no responses, so thought I would give it a go here...

I get down to London a few times a year on business, usually staying fairly centrally. So my birding exploits are usually limited to an early evening wander around one of the parks looking decidedly dodgy in my smart overcoat and binoculars...

Anyway, I was wondering what are the "listing" rules for the various feral species that I see.

So, I guess ring-necked parakeet - being a huge, sustainable feral population - is now considered naturalised and "listable" - yes?

And Egyptian goose is the same? Or are some Egyptian geese listable and some not? This week, there were several in St James's Park in among a lot of the (presumably) captive wildfowl. But I also saw a pair at Brentford dock which I guess were wild...

Then there are some other species. I saw free flying red-crested pochard over the pond at St James's Park this week. And recently, free-flying mandarin duck at Regent's park....

There's probably no final answer to this, but I'd welcome other birders' suggestions!

Cheers!

 

[James Lowther]

standard answer is... it's your list you can tick what you want.

however... i think most birders tick non-native species
a) where they appear on Cat C of the british list
b) where the individuals concerned probably derive from a self-sustaining population

without knowing much about the situation in london, i would imagine most birders would tick the parakeets, maybe also the egyptian geese at brentford, but not the geese or ducks in the parks

cheers,
james

 

[Mysticete]

I would just check what's on the Cat C list, and if the bird is on it, count it.

I think I actually have counted all 4 of those birds from my last trip to London, on my life list.

 

[chris butterworth]

The Parakeets, Egyptian Goose and, possibly the Mandarins ( if they are breeding in Regents Pk. then I'd probably tick them - if I needed them ) are alright but anything in St. James' has to be suspect.

 

[AlexC]

Can't speak to birding in the UK, but here in SoCal the California Rare Bird Committee is notorious for not accepting introduced species which have self-sustaining populations. Though I've marked them accordingly on my list, there are a few birds I've counted which aren't "acceptable" - Yellow-chevroned Parakeet, Rose-ringed Parakeet (also have it on my list introduced in Istanbul), Orange Bishop, California Mute Swans (only Eastern populations accepted by ABA). A few others I haven't confirmed sightings of, but would count based on established populations in the LA area: Mitred Parakeet, Nanday Parakeet, Lilac-crowned Parakeet.

 

[Zheljko]

Can't speak to birding in the UK, but here in SoCal the California Rare Bird Committee is notorious for not accepting introduced species which have self-sustaining populations.

We fortunately have no parakeets (yet), and I haven't heard of any other introduced birds that have self-sustaining populations; it is mostly lone individuals that eventually perish. We are scheduled to get Mandarins, spreading from Croatia as introduced species, any year now; so far I haven't seen any.

 

[lazza]

Thanks for the comments and advice.

Red-crested pochard is the biggest challenge of those species I mention above, as it wouldn't just be my 2014 list, but also a new bird for my UK life-list... It was free-flying, but there were several others on the "captive birds" pond, so I'm still undecided.