The answer was always pretty simple: "Because it would be mainly based on out of range birds in W Europe, and probably from mixed populations as well". That would certainly not give a representative idea of what cachinnans really looks like.
BUT!
I'm very happy to see the 256-rings project started in the Ukraine, and maybe people from Poland, Austria, Rumania(the Ukraine!!!) like to take pictures, write about numbers at their local patch, like to score moult development, etc etc from these ringed birds or other ring projects.
Still I think it would be best to base such a cachinnans section on birds either:
- with rings, to have known age, and known origin;
- or second best: from geographic locations where it is hard to image we deal with other taxa.
As you may have seen at:
http://www.gull-research.org/armenicus/05cymay.html
I think it is nice for people to see a combination of pretty pictures combined with interesting literature or field scores.
Fortunately we have Ronald Klein at this forum as well, who wrote very interesting articles on cachinnans already (could a summary be placed on such a page?
), and I myself very much like to see some kind of recent field work as well (either on migration patterns, moult scores, maybe behaviour as well, etc).Finally: the goal would be a month-to month coverage of cachinnans as 1cy, 2cy, 3cy, sub-adult & adult birds (so about 56 sections to fill!!!)
If you have pictures, please always add date, location, photographer, and if possible a score in the field (if you have seen a bird flying away with tail, primaries and secondaries still juvenile, but you only have a photograph of the bird standing, such information is quite relavant).
Anyone in for such an idea?
Mars
