general interest. This work has been undertaken in an 
effort to encourage bird study and possibly increase our 
sources of information as to bird movement in our territory. 
The response to these articles has been so gratifying that it 
is proposed to extend the plan to other papers in the county. 
The club check list, originally published in 1921, was 
thoroughly revised, brought up to date, and reissued in a 
much more practical and attractive form. 
In preparing the present Bulletin we have been seriously 
confronted with the problem which has apparently beset 
the Editors of similar publications from their inception. 
This is the question of a standard by which to accept or 
reject what may best be termed, unlikely observations. 
Study of the policy of our contemporaries and of recent 
writings of prominent ornithologists has helped, but has not 
resulted in a hard and fast rule by which we may proceed. 
The continual inconsistency of finding primal “sight” rec¬ 
ords in publications having an avowed policy calling for 
the bird in hand, does not tend to clarify the situation. In 
the last analysis the usual questions seem to be: “Who made 
the record?” “Is the bird readily identified from published 
descriptions?” or, “Is the observer familiar with the bird?” 
rather than, “Was the specimen taken?” 
In the particular case of this Bulletin, we are working in 
two related but somewhat distinct fields, that of ornitho¬ 
logical interest and that of statistical record. The first may 
allow some flexibility, the second certainly should not. 
It is improbable that more than a small fraction of the 
unusual happenings are observed, and still fewer, of course, 
properly recorded. We shall therefore publish as matters 
of interest credible reports which may be unsupported by 
sufficient evidence for acceptance as records. In this way 
we hope to stimulate observers to be on the alert for strang¬ 
ers and to report such observations. 
In this connection we cannot too strongly urge the making 
of full and complete notes at the time. The bird may be 
unmistakeable, but there are many cases where a compara¬ 
tively small and obscure marking is all that distinguishes 
one species from another, and it is of the utmost importance 
4 
