Date: 12/13/25 10:31 am From: Travis Hails via groups.io <travishails...> Subject: Re: [EBB-Sightings] Rock Sandpiper and the county line
Once, about 25 years ago, I was birding with professional leaders along the Lower Rio Grande. These leaders explained that a perched bird was in the (political) area of the perch, whereas a bird in flight could be counted by the location of the observer.
This seems to me to make sense, as I really don't know exactly where either the bird is, or where the boundary line is. Rivers change course, but now the political boundary does not.
Just my 2 cents worth.
On Friday, December 12, 2025 at 09:10:42 AM PST, Bruce Mast via groups.io <cathrasher4...> wrote:
My reading of the eBird protocols is that good eBirders should be agnostic to political boundaries. From a science data quality perspective, it makes no sense to exclude a bunch of birds from a checklist just because a political boundary runs through the habitat. The Rio Grande is a more complicated case because it's an ecological as well as a political boundary. Lots of Mexican birds range as far north as the river but don't cross the barrier so I can see a rationale for tallying those birds separately.
Of course, county birders and other listers care intensely about political boundaries.Ebird, almost by definition, is a poor guide for how to tally birds at a boundary. So then the question becomes, for listing purposes, do we count birds from where we stand or where the bird is located? I personally subscribe to the latter view (and I believe many county birders do too) for the simple reason that it avoids creating fallacious reports showing the same bird in two different places at the same time. But everyone gets to keep their own list!
BTW, if anyone reading this is tempted to express their moral judgement of listing, just remember, we all have to find our own joy.
Bruce
On Fri, Dec 12, 2025 at 8:36 AM Maureen Lahiff <mlahiff...> wrote:
Expanding on Bruce’s comments, I have a question.
I’ve had the privilege of birding along the Rio Grande in Texas, at places where one can look into Mexico.
The trip leaders did the eBird lists for us, using hotspots in Mexico for the birds we saw on the far shore. So I have 24 birds in Mexico, observed from the US.
Maureen Lahiff(I’m not a county lister.)
On Friday, December 12, 2025, 8:13 AM, Bruce Mast via groups.io <cathrasher4...> wrote:
I'm not sure what all the consternation regarding the county line is about. Just treat the ambiguous zone as a DMZ. Per the eBird protocol, it doesn't matter where the bird is, just where you are. So you stand south of the DMZ and tick the sandpiper in Alameda, then walk north of the DMZ, start a new list, and tick the bird again in CoCo. Voila, county bird in both counties! LOL
Bruce MastOakland
On Thu, Dec 11, 2025 at 9:28 PM Ethan Monk via groups.io <z.querula...> wrote:
Hi folks,
As most all are aware, this morning Kevin McKereghan and Tera Freedman found a Rock Sandpiper at the mouth of Cerrito Creek, in the Albany Crescent. While bare part color was suggestive, additional photos of the wingstripe are out and confirm this bird as a Rock, rather than a Purple, Sandpiper. For what it is worth, a number of people have mentioned the underwing color as a diagnostic difference here. I had never heard of this so was intrigued, went home and scrolled through Macaulay for a bit and can now say I observe no difference. But maybe I am missing it.
The bird spent much of its time sleeping, originally very close to the grassy edge where it was hidden unless you were to walk out onto the mud, and then later far out on the mudflats. The mud is shallowest north, as you get into Contra Costa County, so when the tide came up, the bird seemed to go south as the northern mudflats vanished more quickly. The creek mouth of Cerrito Creek is most productive at maybe just under a 3ft tide (there is a station at Pt. Isabel). At about 3 feet the habitat is gone, and all is to the south. In the evening the light is horrible, because you are looking west, so I would target a mid tide (~2-2.5 feet) and not later in the day, if possible, and would look from the creek mouth to maybe a thousand feet south of.
At one point today, the bird was on the creek's north bank, but most of the time was a few hundred yards south. There are no records of this species for Contra Costa, so it would be nice to have a record there! The CalTrans signage, on their website and on the highway seem to show the creek as the county line. This includes the actual markers painted on 580 for the road crews, not just the green signs for the drivers. This has been the traditional belief of birders, too, probably because of these conspicuous signs, but as we all know there is controversy here. The Contra Costa County Assessor's Office maps the county line about 130 feet north of the creek (this varies based on where you measure from, and what the tide is doing) but the Alameda County Assessor's Office has their county line about 30 feet north of that! Today at its northmost, a few of us watched the bird maybe thirty feet north of the middle of the creek. So it was not quite there, by the two assessor's offices, but close.
I tried to call CalTrans to figure out where they get their map data from, but I couldn't get to a person at the Oakland office.
Ethan Monk
