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Birding Bloopers- Your most amusing birding experiences (1 Viewer)

Daddylion

The Daddy Lion
For me its got to be the time I saw bluebirds in the yard... then ten minutes later I realized I was standing on the back porch in boots and pajamas in 20 degree weather snapping pictures of birds.:stuck:

Or the time I almost got hit by a car trying to photograph a Starling in some random guy's front yard. Oops...:eek!:

So what about you?
 
Answering the call of nature in Khao Yai NP in Thailand. Ran up the slope in the forest and thought I'd try to be a bit civilised about it so I found a nicely-placed branch to sit over.....which I did and then it broke (thankfully before I'd been!!) and sent me rolling head over heels back down the hill with my trousers round my ankles and leaf-litter in places I daren't mention! That put pay to us seeing any pheasants that morning!!
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When visiting the RSPB in Anglesey and telling the 'very nice' lady that we had a Peregrine Falcon on the fence in our garden (middle of Warrington).
I realised she was looking at me with question mark eyes......then my wife said "you mean a Sparrow Hawk"
Not much difference is there :egghead:
 
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Not my blooper as such but I was up at Leighton Moss when someone called out they'd seen the Bittern. Much swivelling of scopes and binoculars ensued. We couldn't see it but the woman was insistent she could still see it and it was in plain view. One female Mallard later we all went back to our business...
 
Not my blooper as such but I was up at Leighton Moss when someone called out they'd seen the Bittern. Much swivelling of scopes and binoculars ensued. We couldn't see it but the woman was insistent she could still see it and it was in plain view. One female Mallard later we all went back to our business...

...again not mine - or is it? The lovely lady I spoke to about an ID problem who reported a wheatear in her garden. I asked her to describe the bird and of course, she described it perfectly. The problem? It was the middle of winter so I was naturally sceptical (not impossible, but unlikely). Then the penny dropped and I asked her what the bird was doing. If I say that I forgot to ask for a description of the beak you will probably leap ahead and realise she was describing a nuthatch hanging of a peanut feeder.
 
The blooper that still traumatises me is the mass twitch to Christchurch to see the Western Reef Heron which turned out to be an immature Little Egret :C
 
A well known Staffordshire birder once stopped to take a leak on Cannock Chase. He was interrupted by two elderly ladies who stopped to ask him if there were any interesting birds about. He said "I stood there rattling to them for five minutes and when they'd gone I realised I hadn't put myself away"!!! :-O
 
I was once in a crowd at Stanpit desperately trying to follow a chap's directions to a previously reported Kentish plover. Nobody could get on it where it was roosting on shingle.

After about half an hour and having to endure jokes about Stone Curlews and Rock Sandpipers the bloke stormed off with a parting "well I'm ticking it" and I asked the remaining crowd if there were any objections to me walking out to get a closer look.

There was no bird there.

John
 
A well known Staffordshire birder once stopped to take a leak on Cannock Chase. He was interrupted by two elderly ladies who stopped to ask him if there were any interesting birds about. He said "I stood there rattling to them for five minutes and when they'd gone I realised I hadn't put myself away"!!! :-O

That's probably why they talked to him. Would have kept them in coffee mornings for a month.
 
A well known Staffordshire birder once stopped to take a leak on Cannock Chase. He was interrupted by two elderly ladies who stopped to ask him if there were any interesting birds about. He said "I stood there rattling to them for five minutes and when they'd gone I realised I hadn't put myself away"!!! :-O


He resisted the temptation to tell them about the escaped gamecock then? :-O
 
While on a boat trip on a river in Costa Rica, the guide pointed out a Bare-throated Tiger-Heron on the bank.

It was probably usual to see that bird in that spot, and, when he saw movement, called it out.

However it was actually a domestic pig,which ranks as the single worst ID that I've witnessed (even beats a lot of my own howlers).
 
A local birder tells of his early days and birding with a cheap scope. He had spotted a Moorhen. But looking through the other scope available, it was a red winged blackbird standing on a turtle.
 
A few years back my brother found a white billed diver late in the evening off dublin.

Being an almost mythical rarity in Ireland, it sparked a massive twitch,with alot of birders present for dawn next day.

It wasnt at its original location, but I picked it up flying in from about a few hundred meters out at the watchpoint 1km north of the original location. I phoned the main body of birders and they made their way up sharpish.

However, the majority of this group, including a member of the rarities committee began to cast doubt on my ID. Claiming that the bill colour was wrong,problems with the head shape, the gonydeal angle was wrong etc etc.

Over the next ten minutes or so the light improved.....and that bill got whiter...and whiter. And the voices got more and more muted, mumbling the usual excuses about light etc. Only one birder said fair play for making the correct ID initially.

The funniest part was, the rarities committee member tried to suggest that he had flagged this bird as interesting from their view point a kilometer to the south.......which would have been difficult, what with it not having flown in yet.

Owen
 
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I had gone to a preserve and was talking to the president of the birding club there that we had seen a Great Crested Flycatcher at a location a week before and he got all excited about it. I took him to the spot and we found a Western Kingbird (which in itself was a good find that was questioned by eBird). I told him that it was my mistake but that I had misremembered the name. My friend had actually called it a Great Crested Flycatcher but I had corrected him with the correct call but the original name had stuck in my mind when I was talking to the second guy. It's funny that a week after the fact he had tracked me down looking for the post of he flycatcher that I had told him about, only finding the post of the kingbird... what can I say other than I am sorry?
 
We get Ospreys on passage turn up regularly here and a few years ago I left work early one September afternoon to see one that had been reported. It was a hot afternoon and in the heat haze was a bird of prey on a post which was duly identified by the group present as an Osprey. The only small problem was that is was, in fact, a juvenile Peregrine.
The actual Osprey was in a distant tree, feeding. So, for a while, we thought that we had seen two, when we'd only seen one.
 
We were at Port Huron and saw what appeared to be an eagle of some sort but it was much to far away for positive ID. So we drove in its general direction and pulled off in a lakeside park.

Then I saw a large bird wheeling in the breeze and I got a shot of it. At another lakeside park we saw what was for sure a bird of prey and we got a shot of that too.

Further review of the pictures revealed them to be a Herring Gull and a Red-tailed Hawk. :eek!:
 
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I've used all my fieldcraft to approach a distant egret only to find that I'd been stalking a plastic bag, thankfully I was on my own at the time, although this is a common blooper I hear.
Managed to call a treecreeper a nuthatch when out with a group of youngsters.... embarrassing being corrected by the very ones you are supposed to be educating.
 
I've used all my fieldcraft to approach a distant egret only to find that I'd been stalking a plastic bag, thankfully I was on my own at the time, although this is a common blooper I hear.
Managed to call a treecreeper a nuthatch when out with a group of youngsters.... embarrassing being corrected by the very ones you are supposed to be educating.

You've reminded me that I spent half an hour stalking a Snowy Owl perched in a boulder fortress on Ben Macdui to find it was a lump of quartz. It looked like a Snowy, one was known to be in the area, and it was perched where a Snowy would have perched.... the sky was cloudy but the air was blue.

John
 
I was almost convinced I'd seen a little egret at Lound GPs recently, and trudged to a hide near where it was. When I got there all I could find was a sleepy shoveler in the undergrowth. I trudged back to the spot where I first saw it, and realised I'd been seeing the shoveler's breast, with the rest of the bird obscured in shadow!
 
My Bloop

My funniest moment was when i was taking a group of twelve around Strumshaw Fen and i was chatting to a fella about marrows, yes marrows and out of the corner of my eye i spotted two Tree Sparrows so shouted out SMARROWS !!! laugh !!! the group thought it was very funny ? i have never lived it down to this day, i have some friends from the group and they call me The Smarrow Man......:-O
 
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