A petrel seen from Dungeness, Kent and believed by its observers to be Britain's first herald petrel was rejected, although the committee noted that the bird was clearly "an amazing seabird". This decision sparked a number of letters to British Birds questioning whether the committee's stance is too strict. Fea's petrel is now officially accepted as having occurred, but for many years, the identification of these birds was accepted only as Fea's/Zino's/soft-plumaged petrel, followed by a period where they were referred to Fea's or Zino's; however, following BOURC acceptance of two birds in Scilly waters as Fea's petrels, BBRC published a paper arguing that all birds are likely to have been Fea's. The occurrence in Britain of southern (i.e. south polar/brown) skuas is also unresolved. A series of reports of south polar skua, from 1982 to 1993, were all eventually rejected after being assessed for several years. Two other birds (from the Isles of Scilly in 2001, and Glamorgan in 2002 have been accepted (by the BOURC) as belonging to one or other of these two species, while a bird from Dorset in 1996 remains under consideration. Criticisms of level of detail required and approach to single-observer records In 1996, Alan Vittery raised the question of whether the level of detail required by the committee for a description to be acceptable was too high. Similar points were made by Keith Vinicombe and Mike Pennington in 2001. In the light of the rejection of a record of Blyth's reed warbler in Shetland in 1997, Vinicombe and Pennington wrote to British Birds to question the decision. They suggested that the committee was becoming too focussed on minutiae in assessing bird descriptions, ignoring more obvious evidence, Vinicombe saying that "the Committee has prevaricated to the point where it 'cannot see the wood for the trees'". David Walker and Owen Leyshon, David Ferguson, and Andrew Duff have criticised the committee on similar grounds in relation to its approach to the assessment of rare seabirds, citing the Dungeness herald petrel claim as an example. Vittery, and Moss Taylor both expressed concern that BBRC was adopting too strict an approach for records of birds seen only by their finder. In 1998, BBRC explained its approach to the assessment of single-observer records. The committee explained that while it understood that geographical and social circumstances make it likely that some people are more likely to find rare birds