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.