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RockyRacoon

Well-known member
Do you ever remember seeing a bird, that you think you have a good idea of what it is now, but you didn't have a clue then because you were not a proper birder, or really a birder at all...

I remember seeing a wader sp. at a local pond, the water level had dropped, and this bird had flown down onto the pond edge walked a couple of metres and was then stirred by a passing car. My guess now: Wood Sandpiper

Another one, two brown ducks on the sea in late August about four years ago, I was trying to swim out to the buoys, with some people, and remember seeing two brown ducks on the sea. My guess now: Difficult, but perhaps two eclispes Garganeys?

Last one, another sea one, I remember swimming out to an island, I think I was a birder then but not a very good one, at all. On West Wittering Beach, and I remeber seeing a real wierd looking bunch on gulls with dark red beaks, black legs and black headed gull like primaries. My guess now: I don't know, most resembling Slender-Billed Gull I know of but almost certainly not!
 

RockyRacoon

Well-known member
Andrew Rowlands said:
First one more likely to have been a Green Sand.

Second and third - no chance!

I know the third and second are extremely unlikely birds, and the third one is almost garunteed wrong, but the first one (I have best memory of) Wood Sand.
 

RecoveringScot

Well-known member
Jake Apps said:
Do you ever remember seeing a bird, that you think you have a good idea of what it is now, but you didn't have a clue then because you were not a proper birder, or really a birder at all...

Well. I'd already been birdwatching for 8 years, but a friend and I were at Fife Ness in autumn 1976 when we saw two warblers on the fencing near the caravan site. One was a very bright Yellow-browed Warbler, and the bird next to it looked almost exactly the same, only with all the colours 'washed out'. At the time we thought it was just a 'funny YBW' because neither of us had heard anything about 'humei'. I'm not even sure that that species was even regarded as a British bird at that time. Can't remember now. Looking back I think we missed a very good lifer. It's too late to dredge it up at this stage. Thinking back, it's amazing how birds that are now expected were strange and exotic in those days.
 

Jacamar

Well-known member
Leaving the rainforest after one of my first times there, someone pointed out a big black bird running on the trail in front of the bus. I remember that it had white undertail coverts and some yellow on its face - Black Curassow.

Stellar's Jay and Clark's Nutcracker in Estes Park, Colorado. I took pictures of them just out of interest and others here on BirdForum later ID'd them for me.

Scarlet Tanager in Rocky Ridge Park, Pennsylvania.
 

Nutcracker

Stop Brexit!
Going to school one day through my local park, had a large funny-shaped finch flew over, big white wing patch, hadn't a clue what it was.

Couple of years later after seeing my first Hawfinches (in the same park) realised that's what I'd seen go over before
 

Ghostly Vision

Well-known member
Was in Eastern Turkey in 1985 at a site that supposedly had Dalmatian pelicans and Crimson-winged finches.

A flock of birds was found on the edge of a lake, and we identified them as CWF's. I distinctly remember at the time that they didn't look anything like I had expected. There was nothing at all similar though, so that's what they had to be. After all, they had pink in the wings.

Looking in the field guide later that evening, I realised that even the males didn't have black crowns. This left me somewhat flummoxed, but the birds remained on my list.

Only a few short years later some high quality Dutch or scandinavian birders discovered Mongolian Trumpeter finches in Eastern Turkey. This was a bird unkown to me at the time. When I saw a photo of one I immediately knew what the birds that we saw were .

Unfortunately, I am not sure to this day where that place was, or if it is the same as the site where the MTF's are seen regularly - we could well have discovered a new site that pre-dated the well-known one.

There is a very serious lesson here - don't always accept an identification if it doesn't seem quite right. You might, by a bit of detective work, find a new species for a country!!!

GV

ps - a moral dilemma for me there also; I know what those birds were, and I know they weren't Crimson-winged, but can I tick it??
 

Andrew Whitehouse

Professor of Listening
Staff member
Supporter
Scotland
I remember being on holiday in France when I was a kid and seeing a streaky looking bird in with some House Sparrows. I reckon I should have known this at the time but I'm now fairly certain this was a Rock Sparrow.
 

James Blake

chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull
I came to birding pretty late and often wonder about all the remarkable birds I must have unwittingly been in the presence of, especially when I used to travel a lot.

One memory that sticks out. The first time I was conscious of hearing drumming Snipe I realised that it was a sound I had heard many years before but had totally forgotten - if I had even registered it properly in the first place. It's possibly my favourite bird sound and the surfacing of the memory made it doubly evocative.

James
 

Jay23

Well-known member
Jake Apps said:
Do you ever remember seeing a bird, that you think you have a good idea of what it is now, but you didn't have a clue then because you were not a proper birder, or really a birder at all...

I watched a starlingish - sized, rufous coloured bird on the edge of some boggy heathland in the new forest ten or so years back. I knew that it was something different but had no idea what it was. Back in Brighton, I described it to someone in the pub who was supposedly 'in the know'. He said 'Easy mate, A Redstart' and ever since then I thought that that was what I had seen. When I saw a Redstart last summer I realised that he had been wrong ( maybe my description wasn't up to much). I am fairly sure now that what I saw was a female red backed shirke!
 

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