Bird descriptions (1 Viewer)

[markspirito]

A phone call from my friend in France said he has seen a bird he has never seen before, it landed on the gutter of his shed..the size of a woodpecker, the shape of a woodpecker, bright Blue back, black and White head, rufous coloured under wing, bounding flight like a Woodpecker but definitely not a Nuthatch....sounds like a perfect description of a Nuthatch to me, ! with the greatest respect he is a novice, we all have these moments I suppose.

Mark

 

[Sangahyando]

Well, technically speaking it is the size of a woodpecker... a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, that is ||

This seems to happen quite a bit with descriptions in the ID section of this forum, too.
I've had a few moments myself where I struggled to gauge the actual size of a bird, most recently with a Hazelhen that was closer than expected and seemed larger than it should be, probably due to proximity (and brevity of the sighting).