California Bird Records Committee

Bird Photos

Not all photos published here have been accepted by the California Bird Records Committee (CBRC), and indeed, some Not Accepted records are included for educational purposes. Records with a formal decision from the CBRC are indicated, although not all records with a listed decision have yet been published.

Each record with a formal decision has been, or will be, published in a CBRC Annual Report. Annual Reports often provide the rationale for the committee's decision and may include additional information. Annual Reports are published in Western Birds. The most recent reports (1996-2003) are archived here, but readers can find all CBRC reports online through the Searchable Ornithological Research Archive (SORA); the link is at the bottom under "Browse Journals."

The annual reports typically contain sightings from a given year (e.g., the 10 Dec. 2005-9 Jan. 2006 Santa Barbara County Baikal Teal will be treated in the upcoming 2005 Annual Report, due out in summer 2007). For further discussion of any of the "Accepted" or "Not Accepted" photos please refer to the annual report from that year. Note that in certain instances, records take more than one year to review or are submitted too late for inclusion in the report (e.g., the 31 Jul.-1 Aug. 1977, Kern County Green Violet-ear was accepted in 2006 when a photo was first submitted). These records are published as soon as possible after a decision is reached and such records will take more effort to find the corresponding CBRC report. A book compiling all CBRC decisions and their corresponding reports will be published shortly, but information on most of the records listed here should be easy to find on line.