2026 Annual Meeting

2026 TBRC Annual Meeting

The 2026 Annual Meeting of the Texas Bird Records Committee (hereafter committee or TBRC) was held at 11:00 AM on 8 August 2026. The meeting was a virtual meeting using Zoom.

Members/Attendees:

● Tony Frank, Chair

● Blaine Carnes, Secretary

● Sheridan Coffey

● Greg Cook

● Willie Sekula

● Steve Glover

● Jesse Huth

● Arman Moreno

● Matt Heindel

The meeting was convened at 11:02 AM.

Election of Members

Election for Secretary

Carnes was the only nominee for secretary and was re-elected by acclamation.

Re-election of Chair

Frank was the only nominee for chair and was re-elected by acclamation.

Election of New Voting Members

Cook and Coffey had both completed their second terms, and must leave the committee for a minimum of one year. Thank you goes to Greg and Sheridan for their dedication to serving on this committee; it is appreciated. There were two candidates to replace them (nominating members in parentheses):

Mel Cooksey (Heindel), and Cin-Ty Lee (Frank).

The merits of the candidates were discussed and then a vote was taken, with both being elected by acclamation.

At the end of the Annual Meeting, current membership and terms of service are as follows:

● Tony Frank, Chair - term expires in 2027, can be re-elected

● Blaine Carnes, Secretary (Voting Member) - term expires in 2027, can be re-elected

● Matt Heindel – 1st term expires in 2027, can be re-elected

● Jesse Huth – 2nd term expires in 2028

● Steve Glover – 2nd term expires in 2027

● Arman Moreno – 2nd term expires in 2027

● Willie Sekula – 1st term expires in 2028, can be re-elected

● Mel Cooksey – 1st term expires in 2029, can be re-elected

● Cin-Ty Lee – 1st term expires in 2029, can be re-elected

The sequence (used primarily for order for oral/4th round records) of members for voting is now:

Lee, Cooksey, Sekula, Carnes, Heindel, Huth, Glover, Moreno, Frank

Fourth Round Records

There were three fourth-round records discussed and voted on:

2023-091 Vaux's Swift (1) 2 Oct 2023, El Paso, El Paso County
2024-003 Vaux’s Swift (1) 9 Jan 2024, Beaumont, Jefferson County
2024-093 Manx Shearwater (1) 10 Apr 2024, High Island Beach, Galveston County

After lengthy discussion of the fourth-round records above, the results were:

2023-091 Vaux’s Swift – was not accepted by a vote of 6-3 (NOTE: During 4th round voting, if the record gets more than one rejection vote, the record is not accepted). Reasons for rejecting this record focused on the bird’s appearance varying between photos, with a light-throated, light-rumped appearance in some photos and darker in others, as well as the written details for this record being somewhat sparse and not including information such as flight style and behavior. Discussion focused on how this was a difficult ID determination, and, that while many committee members felt they were somewhere between 45% and 55% confident that this bird was a Vaux’s Swift, that that sort of shaky confidence was not enough to accept what would only be the second Texas record of this species.
2024-003 Vaux’s Swift – was not accepted by a vote of 1-8. Similar to the prior record, the majority of the committee was on the fence in regard to the photographic evidence and write-up, and, while most members felt that the winter timing of the record was more indicative of Vaux’s, relying on timing was not enough to support accepting a second state record of this difficult-to-ID species.
2024-093 Manx Shearwater – was not accepted by a vote of 7-2. Discussion on this bird focused on the relatively sparse written details, and that the photos were not enough to judge the actual shape of the bird, or if the undertail covert color was the result of a lighting artifact or overexposure on a flight shot of a fast-moving bird – one comment stated that this vote essentially came down to how much the committee trusted the accuracy of 4 pixels in the photos. Additionally, this would have been one of the only spring records of this species in the Gulf of Mexico.

How to inform the public about TBRC results

A discussion was held on how to better inform the birding public about TBRC results and where to publish reports/results, with an initial decision to write up details on why records are rejected and accepted (in the case of close votes for accepted records) and put those online on FaceBook and the TBRC website.

Cory’s and Scopoli’s shearwaters

There was a discussion on the status of Cory's and Scopoli's shearwaters, with a 9-0 vote to add Cory's to the State Review List due to the comparative lack of records of this species versus Scopoli's and Cory's/Scopoli's. The majority of eBird records in Texas waters were left as Cory's/Scopoli's following the split of these species, and many eBird users have not re-evaluated their records even when photographed.

Difficult-to-ID records

There was a discussion brought up by Carnes on if there should be a protocol for the committee to follow when making decisions on very difficult-to-ID records, with most committee members feeling that it was best to let everyone follow their own processes rather than having set guidelines.

Egyptian Goose

The status of Egyptian Goose was discussed, with Carnes and Heindel volunteering to put together an official write-up on the spread of the species and then have the committee review it before submitting for publication. This would fulfill criteria 8 in the TBRC Criteria for Determining the Establishment of Exotics, and allow us to add the species to the state list.