Birding Bloopers #11

Here is another entry in the current series of birding bloopers from the contributors to the Birding-Aus forum. This one comes from John and Ruth who were birding in the UK at the time.

Our birding blooper happened in UK in 1997. We were staying at a B&B on a pig farm in Lincolnshire. It was wet and foggy (what’s new) when we drove out past the pig sheds. There on one shed was a horned owl of some sort.

After screeching to a halt I made a mad grab for the camera and 400mm lens. Beauty we got off a couple of shots. Being in a hurry we moved on and our films were being sent to a processor who forwarded the finished prints to our daughter in London.

When we got to London we said did you see the great owl photos, her reply was less than enthusiastic “hadn’t we noticed the hook on the owls head for hanging it up”. It must have been there as some sort of deterrent to keep undesirables away from the pig sheds.

My thanks to John and Ruth who gave permission for me to use this.

To read more bloopers click here.

Question for readers:

When did you experience an embarrassing birding moment? Perhaps it was a mistaken identification. Perhaps you didn’t look carefully enough and were later proved wrong. Maybe the bird itself fooled you in some way.
I invite readers to submit their birding bloopers in the comments section below. If it’s good enough I might just feature it in a post of its own, with a link back to your blog (if you have one).