UK 250 Club

The 'rules' of the UK 250 Club were set out on a Surfbirds post with further points of clarity offered on a Punk Birders post (not actual punks). The Punk Birders post is a bit intense and gives examples of situations which may, or may not be self finds. The basic rules of the UK 250 are as per the founding members post on Surfbirds - summarised below: 

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1. The geographical limits; all bird finds will be those of the Great Britain. These are the political entities of England, Scotland, Wales. The boundary extends offshore to 200 nautical miles, or if closer, the median line between adjacent countries.

2. All bird species found, must be on categories A or C of the British List as determined by the British Ornithologists Union.

3. All birds, if applicable, must have been accepted by the records committee appropriate to the rarity and location of the find. This may require a description of the bird to be submitted to the local records committee, the Scottish Birds Records Committee, the Welsh Rarities Committee, the British Birds Rarities Committee or the British Ornithologists Union Records Committee. It is not sufficient to be named as an observer in the relevant rarity report to count a species as a find.

4. The discovery of a bird must be a genuine surprise. Therefore, if your find doesn't constitute an original observation, you must prove that you were completely ignorant of the bird being present at that site. For example, if you find a bird at a particular site, but learn later that someone else had already found the bird there beforehand, you must be able establish that you did not receive any information of the bird's presence there.

5. A re-find must come as a genuine surprise. A re-find will invariably involve a local or national rarity. If there is a sufficient gap in time or place, such that the appropriate rarity report cites the observation complete with the re-finders' names, then it can be counted as a find.

6. All species which breed commonly in GB (i.e. not on Schedule 1 of the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act) can be classed as found without the principle of "genuine surprise" applying (Rules 4 & 5). All other rules of the UK 250 Club still apply; in other words, these species must still have been found and identified by yourself. A list of rare breeding birds on Schedule 1 which can also be counted in this way is given in Appendix 1 at the end of the rules. This is due to these species being so sedentary and restricted in their geographical range and habitat that finding them away from their well known breeding areas would be virtually impossible. All other Schedule 1 species have to be found away from known breeding areas by the normal finding rules of the UK 250 Club.

7. Under normal circumstances, the person who finds a bird will have discovered it and correctly identified it. However, more than one person can find a particular bird if any of the conditions in Rules 8, 9 or, 10 are met.

8. If the person who discovers the bird does not identify the bird to the correct species, he or she must have ruled out all but the principal confusion species to count it as a find. The person (or persons - see Rule 10) who, having seen the bird, first correctly identifies it may also count it as a find.

9. More than one person can claim to have identified a bird if they vocalise or otherwise indicate that they have arrived at the correct identification more or less simultaneously. Honesty is paramount when deciding if the utterance given in the excitement of a find constitutes a correct identification.

10. More than one person, but no more than three, can claim to have identified a bird if the identification evolves over a period of time. In these cases, the persons claiming this record as a find must all fully contribute to the identification of the bird.

Appendix 1 Species on Schedule 1 of the W & C Act (1981) which can be found without the principles of genuine surprise applying (see Rule 6).

Capercaillie
Ptarmigan
Dartford Warbler
Crested Tit
Chough
Scottish Crossbill
Cirl Bunting

Rules devised by Andy Webb, Ben Miller and Phil Hansboro. UK 250 Club Rules 21/11/97