Ring-necked Parakeet: Potton recent history

Is it tickable? Taking the below into account - I'm afraid that yes, it is, much to my disappointment. ;-)

From: George, William
Sent: 06 June 2014 16:04
To: _Bird News;

Friday 30^th May

·         Ring-necked parakeet – flew northwards over Everton road, Potton, squawking loudly at c.8:30pm (Benedict Gove)

rbashford@ [bedsbirds] <bedsbirds@
reply-to:		rbashford
to:		bedsbirds
date:		1 September 2014 07:38
subject:		[BedsBirds] Ring-necked Parakeet, Sandy Heath Quarry

                                                                     Flew towards Oak Farm Deepdale per Darren O-M

Punkbirder s/f rules:

Time Category 1: highly transient species. These are species which are almost always on the move. When individuals are seen, they usually disappear fast. Once disappeared, you don’t really expect them to re-appear in the same place. We therefore reckon you can count these species TWO DAYS after a sighting at the same place.

Time Category 2: Medium transient species. These can be counted FOUR DAYS after a previous sighting at a given site.

Time Category 3: Everything else. Most species can occasionally disappear for long periods, and then re-appear at the same site. Your birding behaviour will change if you’re at a site where you know a rarity was present recently. You’ll be specifically looking out for it. It wouldn’t be a pure find. We therefore think that SIX DAYS is a sensible time period before you can count one of these species.

IMPORTANT NOTE: In some cases, long-staying rarities may not be reported very regularly, for example wintering ducks on remote Scottish lakes. Discretion may be required in these cases, but generally speaking we think a gap of at least a month is required before a sighting of such a long-stayer could count as a self-find. For rarities that return to a known site each year, the first person to find the bird in a given season can count it as a find.

If you find yourself in situation 2, you need to check the Distance Re-finds categories to see if you’ve got a self found tick.

Distance Category 1: Large and mobile species. You’d probably start scanning the sky as soon as you hear one of these species has been seen nearby. Consequently your birding behaviour has changed, thanks to the news. There is an extra complication here: many of these species follow the coastline when migrating, making it possible to track their movements along the coast. On a given day, it may be possible to "pre-emptively twitch" a bird by guessing a point on the coast that it will pass.We therefore have two thresholds for claiming these species as self found: for birds which are being tracked along the coast (i.e. seen previously at another site or sites on the day of your sighting), you must be at least 50km from the most recent report. For birds that are not being tracked along the coast, you’ve only got to be 25km or more away.

Distance Category 2: Intermediate species. Again, these species may follow the coast when migrating, though they are less predictable. The threshold for counting birds that are being tracked along the coast on the day of your sighting is 25km, and 10km for other records.

Distance Category 3: Small, cryptic and less mobile birds. For the species listed here, we reckon 5km is enough to constitute a find, and they are almost impossible to track along the coast so that situation is irrelevant.