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Bird Species Photo Fails (1 Viewer)

R

Redshank3

Well-known member
Whilst looking up planning a break to the Isle of Wight (UK) I noticed a part of the main tourist information website that appeared to be about birding on the island.

http://www.visitisleofwight.co.uk/things-to-do/activities/bird-watching

Please check out the photo!


Clearly not a UK bird, I suspect it has been used as the image for this thanks to someone with no wildlife knowledge google searching a bird name and then using the first hit they get as their image without checking what it really is.

I can recall seeing quite a few bird calendars over the years with American Goldfinch and American Robin instead of the European species (in these instances very obvious what was searched for and how the mistake made) but this photo today seems the oddest I have seen.

Does anyone know what species this is they have pictured?

Has anyone seen any worse misplaced photos?


Tom
 
Redshank3 said:
Whilst looking up planning a break to the Isle of Wight (UK) I noticed a part of the main tourist information website that appeared to be about birding on the island.
http://www.visitisleofwight.co.uk/things-to-do/activities/bird-watchingTom
Click to expand...

Tom,
Once you've booked your trip, you could call them out for looking absolute chickadees;), inferring that if they couldn't get the simple bits right, what trust should anyone have in anything they may have written that is more complicated or nuanced...:eek!:
MJB
 
Some years ago The Times (UK) had a piece about the Kestrel, Falco tinnunculus. The photo used to illustrate the species was of American Kestrel, Falco sparverius. There's no way of knowing whether the original stock photo had been mistitled, or whether the error was down to a Times subeditor. This sort of thing does, of course, tend to happen when a non-birder is involved.

While I'm at it, an irksome thing is the practice by Wikipedia of flouting convention by capitalizing only the first word of a bird's common name, hence "American kestrel".

Such things are mildly exasperating to birders, but I guess life is too short to worry unduly about it. Though the IOW example is particularly egregious!
 
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Not a photo fail but a Wildlife film fail.

I have been watching the 'Wild' series of programs on NatGeo Wild channel and was watching Wild Thailand. The commentary was abismal, basically telling you what your actually seeing 'ie bird sitting on branch looking around' for a bird sitting on a branch looking around.

However the worst bit was at the coast when cemmentator was talking about the species being shown. These were correct until the last one when a Greater Sandplover was shown and commentator announced it as a Wood Sandpiper. |^|

Wanted to throw something at the TV.
 
When the RSPB-attacking 'You Forgot About The Birds' website first went live it had a photo of an American bird as its main homepage header photo. If I remember correctly it was a Carolina Wren.
 
The following isn't a "photo fail" but it's a bit startling. In the Mitchell Beazley Birdwatcher's Pocket Guide by Peter Hayman, the entry for Jack Snipe includes the text "Cp profile with Snipe. Note broader wings, shorter bill and tail". Hayman's illustrations indeed depict Jack Snipe with broader wings than Snipe. In fact, the wings are narrower in Jack Snipe, which is confirmed by Hayman himself in his definitive Shorebirds.

My edition is a 1999 reprint - maybe it's been corrected since then, but there had been multiple previous reprints which didn't.

I can understand making a slip in the text, but to actually illustrate it incorrectly too seems astonishing. Having said that, one error should not detract from Peter Hayman's reputation as one of the top authorities in this area.

(I hope I've got this right, or it'll be an epic fail on my part!)
 
In a copy of LandLove Magazine a couple of years ago it had a feature about the birds that can be found in Britain's hedgerows. I noticed they'd used a photo of a Grey-headed Woodpecker and assumed that they'd just made a mistake thinking it was Green Woodpecker but no, they'd actually correctly captioned the photo and the copy went on to describe how Grey-headed Woodpeckers are common and easily seen in the UK.
 
Not a bird, but check out the photo of the "Otter" on the Assam Department of Environment and Forests website for Orang National Park: (link).
 
One of the boat tour companies specialising in trips for the Dalmatian Pelicans at Lake Skadar, Montenegro, uses pictures of American White Pelicans in their marketing.
 
Trident Hotel, Agra, India

Wonderful hotel, great grounds and loads of birds, even a "Bird Zone". Sadly I didn't see what was depicted on the sign...
 

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