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birds have a different tail pattern, something which can be very hard to ascertain on typical views of a dashing Merlin in the field.

As national firsts involving tricky subspecies, these examples are at the extreme end of the range, but they illustrate the point well. Should the same principle be applied universally to all birds new to Britain, so that they are only accepted when confirmed by photographic evidence? That would be a contemporary take on the famous old collectors’ adage of “What’s hit is history, what’s missed is mystery”. Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since the Victorian era of blasting vagrants out of the sky as proof of their occurrence – and as the Hastings Rarities saga showed (see

242: 29-33), a collected specimen often wasn’t enough to eliminate the possibility of fraud anyway. But irrefutable photographic evidence would provide a level of proof over and above a written description, dispelling any possibility of misidentification or other doubt. There is an example of this kind of system already in place. For many years in autumn I have birded the Azores, when there have been multiple records of vagrants new not just to the archipelago and Portugal, but also to the Western Palearctic. There are guidelines for records published in the annual Azores Rare

drawn up initially by Peter Alfrey, which set out the need for a “clear photographic record” in the case of single-observer reports, with a similar emphasis on sound recordings where call is a critical identification feature.

In most instances such evidence should be achievable. Many birders now carry cameras or digiscoping equipment, meaning that increasingly few rarities escape such documentation. Forewarned is forearmed, and it’s in all our interests that major rarities are confirmed beyond doubt. So if you are lucky enough to find a first, don’t forget to take a photo. ■

❝The Mandt’s Black Guillemot in Lincolnshire would surely not have made the grade but for the photos scrutinised by the committee❞