Birding bloopers #5
I’ve been featuring a number of birding bloopers on this blog. These bloopers are essentially misidentifications of birds and are often quite hilarious and always embarrassing.
Simon contributed this gem to the Birding-Aus forum:
Recently while showing an overseas visitor around my local area I screeched to a halt when I spotted a Black-shouldered Kite perched in a dead tree by the roadside.
We reversed some 100 metres to gain a view of it again, and to my total embarrassment there before us was a white plastic bag caught on the uppermost snag.
Just had to laugh !
Thanks to Simon for permission to use this one.
For more birding bloopers click here.
Birds of a Feather and love birds
I’ve never been one to observe St Valentine’s Day because I believe that every day should be a special day for the one that you love. Many people do observe the day, however, and the Audubon web site has a special St Valentine’s Day feature to help birders celebrate this day in a special way.
They have three special features:
- Avian love birds – special courting behaviours in birds.
- Human love birds – interviews with couples who met through birding activities or clubs.
- Green gift ideas – some ideas for gifts that will benefit the birds.
To read more click here.
Birding bloopers #3
Over the last two days I’ve reported some of the bloopers other birders have reported on BIRDCHAT. Here is yet another one – actually, today you get two for the price of one, both from Kathy:
While in Alaska at a B&B at dusk I was unpacking my car and there was a Great Horned Owl in the tree. Oh boy as I shot off a roll only to discover that it was a fake one.
Another, in the Central Valley in CA during Snow Geese time there was a lone Snow Goose and I was taking a few photographs when a couple of hunters sitting a little way off said that the Snow Geese were behind me. I was photographing a decoy!
Birding bloopers #2
Yesterday I wrote about some of the mistakes I, and others have made trying to identify birds. Sometimes what we think is a bird is something else completely, something like a stone that looks like a bird at first glance. Other birders have similar experiences, I’m happy to report, like Steve admitted on BIRDCHAT:
The one blooper that my (non-birding) family will never let me forget: We were driving on the highway in the suburbs of Minneapolis, when I spotted a large bird perched on a fence post. My initial ID’s of some kind of hawk… no! an owl! … were met with prolonged laughter when we discovered a it was a cat sitting on top of the post. It is hard to travel that road with my family without them snickering, even now, years later. Birders are far more forgetful and forgiving.
Steve
Confusing a cat with an owl or hawk?
Even my identification skills are somewhat better than that.
And I know a good optometrist I could recommend to Steve.
Birding bloopers #1
As in all human pursuits, mistakes are made. Even by seemingly experienced people. And birders are no exception to this rule. I’ve lost count of the number of stones, rocks, sticks, protruding parts of branches and a range of other things that, at first glance, had to be something special, an unusual bird, the species I’d been looking for all day or just a good sighting.
Then training the binoculars on said “bird” one discovers its true identity. It is quite a letdown feeling one gets, and if another person is with you, it can be downright embarrassing, like Mark did in this account from BIRDCHAT:
Years ago I was birding with a friend on Salthouse Heath, Norfolk. Our targets included nightingale and nightjar. In the falling dusk, everything reduced to silhouettes we were surprised to find a Ring-necked Pheasant roosting in a bush top, its tail cocked as if in alarm, but as we approached it didn’t flush – just sat there. Closer and closer we walked until we finally realised our mistake – it was a saucepan (long-handled cooking pot) someone must have flung out of a passing car, that had landed handle uppermost. And when we did finally track down the churring nightjar and came closer and closer to it, what did we find but a birder playing a tape-recording. Double blooped!
Mark