Posted by Rock Jetty on January 01, 1970 at 00:00:00
Hi Margie, A few points to address your questions: I did a species search for Bahama Mockingbird for all years in Florida - no sign of a sighting in Lee County. You mentioned 8/23, that was two days ago. Please realize there may be a dozen or so observations that come in every day for a reviewer (in Lee County for example) to go over and that reviewer may or may not get to them on the same day. Verification is not instant and sometimes observations get backed up (it happened to me a lot). If a sighting cannot get confirmed, it will not be accepted, simple as that. A reviewer will more than likely ask the observer for some sort of confirmation (always in a nice way) - a photo, at the very least a thorough description. You'd be surprised but there are some birders out there that get upset when we ask them to confirm some of their rare sightings. Not everyone who enters observation is an "expert" birder. That's why there is a quality assurance/quality control process. Cornell will not be concerned about this. Data is never, ever, 100% error-proof the first, or even second time around. Eventually errors get addressed. Take it from someone who is experienced with data collection and entry. If I was a betting man I would say that the observer may have incorrectly identified this species. -RJ