To follow up on Bill's response, the Ohio Bird Records Committee is not
at all involved in what you can "count". That's between you and the ABA
if you submit your lists to them, or between you and your conscience
when it comes to your personal lists. And the OBRC also doesn't
generally make decisions about whether an introduced population has
become "established" (whatever that means). We do keep the official
state list, so that issue might someday come up with another species.
But Trumpeter Swan is on the list based on 19th century records; when or
whether the modern population has become established won't change that.

As for counting Ohio Trumpeter Swans, I certainly don't. I would have to
hunt for the actual ABA definition, but as I recall, it involves a
population sustaining its numbers for a decade or so after humans stop
introducing new ones. We're nowhere near that point with Trumpeter
Swans. We may not know the origin of a particular bird seen away from
the release sites, but we can say with very good confidence that it's
either a release bird, or at most only a couple of generations removed.
Either way, it's not ABA countable. Countability is about whether the
population of the species is established, not whether the individual
bird was released. We have no idea yet whether the population of
Trumpeter Swans will sustain itself over time, or whether it will
gradually disappear after we stop cranking out new ones. Until we do
know (and that may take a couple of decades yet), they're not countable
under ABA rules.

To broaden the discussion, the same issue pertains to urban Peregrine
Falcons, the descendants of hacked Ospreys, etc. Of course, truly wild
individuals of those species certainly occur in Ohio, so deciding which
individual birds you can count with a clear conscience is much more
difficult.




John Habig wrote:
> This question is addressed more to the OBRC but I posted it here because
> I hear the question raised quite often.
>
> When (or where) can you count Trumpeter Swans in Ohio? I know that ODNR
> released them at Killdeer, Ottawa, and the Wilds and that these are
> technically not ABA countable, but what if you see them somewhere else
> and they are not tagged and appear to have gotten there by their own
> means?
>
>
> John Habig
> 261 Lantis Dr.
> Carlisle, Ohio 45005
> [log in to unmask]
>
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Ned Keller
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