Men Behaving Badly (1 Viewer)

Well it made me smile. I went down to East Lothian today to see the trio of warblers all within 15 miles of each other-Paddyfield, Dusky and Humes. I got good views of the first two and reasonable views of the the Humes. It was a bit elusive and was in a triangular shaped small woodland area. I was just finished and walked down to the bottom of the wood when I saw this guy get out his ghettoblaster and start playing a tape of the Humes calling. Back from the other side of the triangle came the same call. This went on for a couple of minutes. Then the guys from the other side came hustling round and everyone looked intently up towards the trees. It was then that one of the newly arrived guys spotted the ghettoblaster and started to look sheepish. He then brought out his own tape device. Yes, the two sets of lurers had managed to catch each other. Anyone else experience something like this??

Excellent story! Bit of a touchy subject with potentially tired migrants though.

I remember last year in China when two of us were off a trail in the forest and saw two of our friends walking towards us, we knew that they were looking for a particular bird, Koklass Pheasant, so played the tape to them, they responded with playback, and this continued for 10-15 minutes as we walked further and further away and along the trail, much to their frustration! At lunch they were complaining how they had followed a calling Koklass Pheasant for ages without a postive result! Great fun and laughter all round when we told them what had happened!

Another time was last May in Malaysia, when we were walking along a forest trail and saw the same two friends walking towards us, 200 metres away, knowing that their bogey bird was the Malaysian Rail-babbler, we hid off trail and played the long, unmistakable whistle of the Rail-babbler, after ten minutes of trying to contain ourselves, nothing happened. Looking round the corner we noticed them sitting down, only 30 metres away, so we played the call again, but really loud, still no response! We couldn't believe it, until it got to the point where we had to give ourselves up, their reply? Well, they thought it was another bird, the much commoner Garnet Pitta, no wonder they didn't see one of these birds!

Yes, I agree, I'd thought about saying something(hence the title) but left it after what happened