Having fun with models: understanding the Patagonia Picnic Table Effect



     Ever hear of the Patagonia Picnic Table Effect?  It's named for the concrete picnic table at the roadside rest along the 2-lane highway near Patagonia, Arizona.  

Rose-throated Beccard



The story goes that somebody found some "good" birds there when they got out of their car to take a break.  Perhaps those "good" birds were some Rose-throated Beccards that nested there for a few years, or maybe a Tropical Kingbird, or some other denizen from south of the Mexican border. 

 

Anyway, the discoverer duly reported the find.  Soon other birders came to see that rarity, and found other "good" birds, like Blue Mockingbird, Rufous-capped Warbler, and others.  These birds were also reported to Rare Bird alerts, more birders came to the rest stop, and  found more rarities.  These were reported, thus attracting even more birders, and so on.  This kind of scenario obviously has occurred in lots of other places.  Indeed, almost any "hot spot" has become a "hot spot" because of this Effect.  

Blue Mockingbird

     I am not sure who was the first to name this scenario the Patagonia Picnic Table Effect, but many writers have referred to it by this name.  As a modeler, I like to think that models can be used to help us understand real life, and the Patagonia Picnic Table Effect provides a good example to try to model just for fun.  See, not every model has to be used to discover some unknown piece of the bigger puzzle or to test hypotheses.  Models can be just for fun!

     So, what would a model of the Patagonia Picnic Table Effect look like?  Like many other models of birders' behavior in the field, this model starts out with some basic Bird-Birder interactions like encountering birds, deciding whether to try to identify them, and ultimately working out some of the identifications.  The addition to the basic model in this case is that at least one of the identified birds is recognized by the birder as a "rarity" (Figure 1).

 

Figure 1.  Basic Bird-Birder interactions leading to the identification and recognition of some "rarity" worthy of being reported to a local hotline.

 

     When the birder recognizes a rare or unusual species, she decides not to keep the sighting to herself, but reports it to a Rare Bird Alert or some other birding hotline.  Birders who were dutifully at work or having a second cup of coffee at home or otherwise "inactive" (i.e., not in the field birding) get these reports, and that is when all heck breaks loose.  If the reported bird is really unusual for that location, it motivates these inactive birders to go "chase" the bird (i.e., to chase the report of the bird, actually).  In this model, I am calling folks who hear these reports and decide to go try to see the rarity "chasers" to distinguish them from "active birders" who initially find and report these birds (Figure 2).

Figure 2.  Inactive birders hear reports of rare birds and are motivated to become "chasers" of those reports.

     As these "chasers" show up and (hopefully) relocate the rare bird, their searching can turn up other "good" birds.  These also get reported to the hotlines, bringing even more "chasers" to the scene who find even more "good" birds, and so on.  This last figure (3) shows the full Patagonia Picnic Table Effect.

Figure 3.  Full model of the Patagonia Picnic Table Effect.

     I hope that this blog post has shown that models can be developed to show experiences that occur in real life, including situations that have been immortalized in the birding literature with their own names.  See models can be fun, can't they?

Go bird!