British Birds Rarities Committee
The British Birds Rarities Committee, established in 1959, is the national bird rarities committee for Britain. It assesses claimed sightings of bird species that are rarely seen in Britain, based on descriptions, photographs and video recordings submitted by observers. Its findings are published in an annual report in the journal British Birds.
The BBRC covers around 280 species whose annually recorded sightings in Britain fall below a threshold deemed to signify rarity. Since the establishment of the committee, some previously included species have become more common—or at least better recorded; this has resulted in their removal from the committee's list and their reclassification as "scarce migrants".
The committee has a chairman, a secretary, and ten voting members, and is supported by others who serve in an advisory capacity. Since its inception, a total of 69 people have served on the committee as assessors. In addition to assessing annual records of rare birds, the committee conducts regular reviews of batches of previously accepted records on a species-by-species basis, to ensure that only those consistent with advances in knowledge of bird identification are retained, and to determine the subspecies of accepted records. Several species have been problematic for assessment, and extreme examples have taken more than 20 years from initial observation to acceptance. The committee has been criticised for its approach to assessing records where only one observer was present, for not publishing reasons for rejecting the validity of records, and for placing undue weight on descriptive detail when assessing record submissions. Seabird identification has proved particularly difficult, leading some observers to suggest that the committee sets too high a standard.
Role and status
The "Rarity Records Committee" was established in 1959 by the editors of the journal British Birds. Its original purpose was to provide a means whereby uniform assessment standards could be applied to all rare bird records across Britain. Prior to the establishment of the committee, records were assessed by local bird recording organisations using varying standards. The most recent statement of the British Birds Rarities Committee's role is given in Bradshaw, Harvey and Steele :BBRC aims to maintain an accurate database of the occurrence of rare taxa in Britain, in order to enable individuals or organisations to assess the current status of, and any changes in, the patterns of occurrence and distribution of these taxa in Britain.
Contradictory information has been published on the exact nature of the committee's status. On its website, BBRC describes itself as the "official adjudicator of rare bird records in Britain". In Birders: Tales of a Tribe, author Mark Cocker erroneously describes the committee as a "statutory vetting body". BBRC's constitution states that it "has no automatic or legal expectation that birders submit records".
The committee does not assess records of birds from Ireland; that task is carried out by the Irish Rare Birds Committee, which publishes its decisions in Irish Birds. Records of IRBC-assessed rarities were included in BBRC annual reports for many years, although this ceased in 2002 at the request of IRBC. Although the British Ornithologists' Union Records Committee does not regard records from the Isle of Man as contributing towards their British list, BBRC does include records from there in its totals. BBRC has had an ongoing sponsor in the German optical equipment manufacturer Carl Zeiss since 1983.
Species covered
Over 580 bird species have been recorded in Britain; some 250 have regular breeding or wintering populations, or are common migrants, and a further 50 are "scarce migrants". The BBRC assesses the remaining species. A list of the species the committee assesses is on its website, although the list has not been updated to account for the most recent changes. The committee generally considers only the records of species rare enough to meet its criteria for inclusion on the BBRC rarities list, based on a numerical threshold. In addition to considering full species, records of some rare subspecies are considered and, in a few cases, the committee considers indeterminate records.Image:Black-and-white Warbler.jpg|alt=small black-and-white bird with prominent white eyebrow on a branch|Black-and-white warbler, a species on the BBRC's list|thumb|right
The committee keeps the list of species it considers under review and, from time to time, makes changes. These are usually because species have increased in frequency and no longer meet the numerical criteria for inclusion. A species is removed if it has more than 150 records in the preceding ten years, with ten or more in at least eight of those years. Different criteria were used in a review in 2006. There have been three major "purges" of species since the committee's formation. The first was soon after the committee's formation, in 1963, when 16 species were removed: red-crested pochard, snow goose, pectoral sandpiper, Mediterranean gull, Sabine's gull, melodious warbler, icterine warbler, yellow-browed warbler, northern goshawk, golden eagle, red kite, Kentish plover, crested tit, bearded tit, marsh warbler and Dartford warbler. Records of the last eight species had been considered only outside their "normal" British range. Kentish Plover was readmitted in 2020 following the loss of breeding populations in both the UK and nearby continental Europe leading to a massive decline in records. The second was in 1982, when ten further species were removed: Cory's shearwater, purple heron, white stork, buff-breasted sandpiper, Richard's pipit, tawny pipit, Savi's warbler, aquatic warbler, serin and common rosefinch. Savi's warbler was re-admitted to the committee's list in 1998, due to declining numbers of occurrences, with Tawny Pipit and Aquatic Warbler being reinstated in 2015. Thirdly, in 2006, a further 17 species were dropped from the list: ferruginous duck, Wilson’s petrel, great white egret, black kite, red-footed falcon, American golden plover, white-rumped sandpiper, white-winged black tern, alpine swift, red-rumped swallow, red-throated pipit, subalpine warbler, greenish warbler, dusky warbler, Radde's warbler, Arctic redpoll and rustic bunting. Their selection was based on different criteria from those previously used: more than 200 records in Britain ever, and more than 100 occasions in the last decade. Of the 17 species that were removed in the 2006 purge, three have been reinstated - Ferruginous Duck in 2017, and Red-throated Pipit and Rustic Bunting in 2015.
Image:Anas carolinensis FWS.jpg|alt=Two ducks swimming to the right. The female at the front is mainly brown, the drake behind her has a grey body, white undertail, and a head patterned with reddish and green. The vertical white bar, diagnostic of drake green-winged teals, is clearly visible.|Green-winged teal, a species formerly considered by BBRC, but now occurring too regularly to meet its rarity criteria|thumb|left
Many other species and subspecies have been removed over the years: Cetti's warbler ; long-tailed skua ; common crane and ring-billed gull ; surf scoter, little egret, European bee-eater, Pallas's warbler and woodchat shrike ; green-winged teal ; ring-necked duck, greater short-toed lark and little bunting ; white-tailed eagle and Kumlien's gull ; American wigeon, black-crowned night heron and rose-coloured starling ; and black brant.
Until 2009, the parrot crossbill was an anomaly, in that it was on the committee's list of species, even though a breeding population existed in Scotland. In 2009, this species was removed, along with white-billed diver and cattle egret. Latter removals included Glossy Ibis and Olive-backed Pipit in 2013, Lesser Scaup, Citrine Wagtail and Blyth's Reed Warbler in 2015, Black-winged Stilt and Red-flanked Bluetail in 2017, and Lesser Yellowlegs and Arctic Warbler in 2019.
In 2021, for the first time, White-spotted Bluethroat became the first taxon to be added to the BBRC list that hadn't previously been removed.
Once removed, a species is classed as a "scarce migrant": British Birds publishes a separate annual report summarising the occurrence of these species, and the data is also presented on the Scarce Migrants website. Aside from breeding species, Cetti's warbler, little egret, long-tailed skua, Mediterranean gull, Cattle Egret, Great White Egret and Yellow-browed Warbler have become so common that they no longer qualify even as scarce migrants.
Structure and personnel
The committee has ten voting members, a chairman and a non-voting secretary. BBRC was assisted in its assessment of seabird records by a Seabirds Advisory Panel from 1987 to 1996. In 1999, the BBRC set up the "RIACT" group to advise on how records of rare subspecies should be treated. RIACT published its first report in 2006, setting out the subspecies it believed were sufficiently diagnosable, and that occurred infrequently enough to justify being assessed by the rarities committee. Prior to this, a partial selection of rare subspecies had been routinely included in BBRC reports; the RIACT report aimed to bring consistency to the selection for future years. When a record is of a species not previously recorded in Britain in a wild state, BBRC deals with assessment of the bird's identification, then passes the record to the British Ornithologists' Union Records Committee, which decides whether the species should be included on the BOU's British Bird list.The committee has two permanent posts, a Chairman and a Secretary: they are appointed by the board of British Birds. There had been no fixed term for these appointments before 2008, however, a three-year fixed term, with a limit of ten years, was introduced with the change of chairman in that year. The current chairman, the committee's seventh, is Adam Rowlands; the six previous chairmen were Philip Hollom, Ian Wallace, Peter J. Grant, Peter Lansdown, Rob Hume and Colin Bradshaw. The committee's secretary is Nigel Hudson, appointed in 2007. Its previous secretaries were G. A. Pyman, Christopher M. Swaine, Denzil D. Harber, F. R. Smith, J. N. Dymond, J. O'Sullivan and Mike Rogers.
At least one record-assessing member retires every year, to balance experience with "new blood". The committee usually nominates its own replacement candidate, but also invites nominations from others, and if any are received, holds an election among county bird recorders and the bird observatory network. A set of criteria for membership has been developed—currently, these are "a widely acknowledged expertise in identification, proven reliability in the field, a track record of high quality submissions of descriptions of scarce and rare birds to county records committees and BBRC, considerable experience of record assessment, the capacity to handle the considerable volume of work involved in assessing upwards of 1,000 records per year and the capacity to work quickly and efficiently". The following 69 individuals have served on BBRC in a records assessment capacity:
A number of other individuals have served as the committee's statisticians, museum consultants, archivists and avicultural consultants, or on the Seabirds Advisory Panel or RIACT.
The committee has stated that it has a desire to be made up of members of "all age ranges and both sexes"; however, all BBRC members to date have been male, a fact reflected in the nickname "the ten rare men". Measures exist to ensure that the committee has a geographic balance amongst its membership—BBRC's constitution states that it "should attempt to provide a reasonable geographical spread with members having a detailed knowledge of each of the following areas: Wales, Scotland, Northern England, the Midlands, the Southwest and the Southeast of England".
Documentation of records, including the members' deliberations, are kept in the committee’s archives, which are deposited with the British Trust for Ornithology. Some older data is missing, as the committee's files were originally held by the editors of British Birds, and they were not transferred to the new owners of the magazine when it was sold in the 1960s.