Date: 9/19/26 11:26 am From: Gary Bletsch via Tweeters <tweeters...> Subject: [Tweeters] "Pish" rarities app
Dear Tweeters,
As several Tweeters have recently reported, the new app "Pish" is supposed to notify birders about rarities. I just tried it out, but was not at all impressed.
I had hoped to use Pish, since eBird's Rare Bird Alert balks at any attempt to use it with my Yahoo e-mail address. As an aside, I heard a story on NPR the other day, in which Yahoo and some other "legacies" on the Internet were described as "zombies," a term which seems quite accurate! Pish is far too young to be a zombie, but it does lumber about in an ungainly manner.
Anyway, the first failing of Pish occurred every time I tried to log on with my newly selected user name and password. Pish sent me on an endless loop, saying that my e-mail address was not confirmed. I had already confirmed my e-mail address with Pish, having received a message intended to accomplish that step. I had had a similar experience with Pish a few weeks ago, after I had first heard about it. So, problem number one involves signing up for an account.
Pish allows one to check for rarities as a guest, so I tried that. I don't know how Pish is working for rarities in Washington, but it is not working very well in Western New York and surrounding areas. Within a large radius of Jamestown, NY, there are only a handful of rarities showing up. A Eurasian Moorhen in Rochester is showing up on Pish's map. I am wondering if that is really a Eurasian Moorhen, or just a misidentified Common Gallinule. I see nothing about a recent NY State occurrence of a Eurasian Moorhen on eBird.
What really makes me suspicious of Pish is that the next closest rarity on its map of my region is an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, reported from some place up north of Toronto. As best I know, the presumably extinct IBWO was never ever recorded anywhere in Canada, so this is probably a report by a beginner who had seen a Pileated Woodpecker. It seems that Pish does not vet the rarities it reports. So, problem number two is that a birder using Pish gets stuck with the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" effect.
From my current geographic standpoint, the next suite of rarities shown on Pish's map are a bunch of what I'd call "good birds," all of which are down in the New York City area. They include an Eastern Whip-poor-will, a Pine Siskin, a Savannah Sparrow, and a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher. The last three are just normally occurring migrants that one would expect to see down there every year; the Whip-poor-will is a species in severe decline, but still reported annually in NY State. Those are all four very nice, but three of them are probably not worthy of a rare-bird alert. For example, there are scores of other reported Savannah Sparrows in the greater NY metro area, just for September of 2026. I don't know why a single one merits mention on Pish, while the others are all ignored, unless perhaps it was a good bird for the county where it showed up. So, problem number two is a seemingly inconsistent reporting of uncommon or "barely rare" birds.
The next closest bird reported on Pish's map is a Yellow Grosbeak reported from Central New Jersey. That grosbeak is normally found in Mexico, but has occurred a handful of times in the SW United States, as well as Arkansas and Iowa. I suppose it might be legit, but I would certainly not drive all day to look for a bird reported on a website that also reports an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Ontario! That is especially true in view of the fact that there is absolutely nothing that I can find on eBird in reference to a Yellow Grosbeak in NJ.
Well, how do I find out about rarities? I have found a workaround on the eBird rare bird alert. I put a shortcut to it on my cell phone, and so I can check it when the thought crosses my mind. My barely functioning old Yahoo e-mail account won't let me receive any alerts, but at least I can check for them manually. Unless Pish cleans up what appear to be several serious drawbacks, I won't be bothering with it anytime soon.
Yours truly,
Gary BletschÂ
<garybletsch...>
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