It occurs to me, after reading several recent comments placed on the 'Sightings' board by 'Professional' birders towards their 'Amateur' counterparts, that we ought to have two 'sightings' boards. One for the Twitch or more unusual birds and the other for the 'Dross' as Steve so eloquently put it.

Either that or the experts learn to wind their necks in and remember the days that to them all gulls were seagulls and wouldn't know a Sabine's if it pinched their chips down Cleethorpes Seafront.

Surely, all bird sightings that are recorded are useful for the LBC and other interested parties. If people stop recording or being interested in the common stuff then it will be more difficult to notice downturns in numbers in species such as the House Sparrow.

Indeed James systematic recording of common birds from distinct areas can be useful over protracted time periods but as someone who has written a few county reports and numerous other reports and papers I can state that odd records from an area without limits are in actual fact worth very little to anyone unless they are used to suggest a subject for further research;
as an example let us consider a record of 11 Blue Tits from Barton pits on November 20th (these are all made up examples)---a) Barton pits is a rather big area and without a specific reference point could refer to anywhere within 3-4 square miles; b) within that area there may well be in the order of 70-80 breeding pairs of Blue Tits; if each reared an average of 5 young per year at the end of the breeding season there would be about 500 Blue Tits in the area--even allowing for post breeding losses 300 or so would be around in November so even though seeing 11 together may warrant a note in the note book is it actually of any use or relevance to any report or study? Multiply up that number of Blue Tits by the number of 10km squares in Lincolnshire and how any Blue Tits are we taking about and how relevant is a sighting of 11 of those 3-400,000? Now if you then had a defined 2km square area in which you recorded Blue Tits say even once a month for the whole year following a set route on each visit then some variations in numbers may become evident and a relevant result would be obtained.
On the other side of the coin simply only recording the odd Yellow-browed Warbler and never mentioning anything else is just as useless to a full county report but if its location and dates of occurrence are noted then at least it is definite information which is there for comparative analysis.
We know that all people do not have the time or inclination to undertake frequent survey type birding but there are valid reasons why people with extensive experience simply do not record what they know to be common and widespread species on a one off occurrence/location because the record would be virtually worthless. This is not to decry people's own records which are personal to them and are part of their own birding experience. I note down Coal Tits in my garden but I don't actually think that many people on the forum would be interested to know how many I have seen on which days of the year. People who are new to birding will take time to understand just what is common and what is not in different parts of Lincs for example but it does pay to get hold of an old County Bird Report (they are all old now) prior to 1996 and just look through at what species get mentioned from where and it will shed a lot of light on species abundance and distribution.
And none of this is meant to be critical just an explanation! Roger!

This is not a critisism, but when I was being taught the art of creative writing, it was advisable to use short paragraphs, thereby keeping the reader interested.

By the time I'd reached the tenth line I was beginning to think I was listening one of Roger's monologues!

Forty plus lines without a double space is far too much, especially if you want the reader to take on board what you are saying.