Birders,

The California Bird Records Committee has accepted the recent well-documented
record of an adult Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus) at Southeast Farallon
Island, San Francisco Co., 25 April to at least 25 June 2012. Along with the
gain of one species with the recent split of Xantus's Murrelet into Scripps's
Murrelet (Synthliboramphus scrippsi) and Guadalupe Murrelet (S. hypoleucus),
this brings the California state list to 648 species.

As noted in an earlier message on 25 June, the Committee has also voted to
accept the Taiga/Tundra Bean-Goose from the Salton Sea; in addition, the Common
Crane at Lake Earl, Del Norte Co. 5-8 May 2011 was accepted (but with two
members questioning the natural origin of this bird). The acceptance of the
latter and the implementation and acceptance of a mechanism to add non-species
such as Taiga/Tundra Bean-Goose would bring the state list to 650 species
(including one species-pair). Requests have been made by CBRC members to
further discuss the goose situation and to discuss (and possibly re-review) the
crane record at the January 2013 CBRC meeting, so their acceptance at this point
should be considered provisional. Concerns about the goose center on the
desirability of adding a species pair as an entity on the state list, and as
noted above concerns about the crane center on the question of natural origin.

Northern Gannet is inserted in the state list after Red-footed Booby, and is
also placed on the review list. Provisionally, Taiga/Tundra Bean-Goose (Anser
fabalis/serrirostris) would be placed on the list before Greater White-fronted
Goose, and Common Crane (Grus grus) after Sandhill Crane, with both also added
to the review list. Stay tuned about those species.

Kimball

Kimball L. Garrett
Ornithology Collections Manager
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
900 Exposition Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90007 USA
213-763-3368
kgarrett@...
http://www.nhm.org/site/research-collections/ornithology