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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Larry Sweetland" data-source="post: 1756559" data-attributes="member: 27337">Something happened to me the other day that made me think of this thread, and I thought it might be interesting to also point out that you can ask too few questions when in a hide with other more experienced birders!On Sunday I was lucky enough to be in a hide at Mai Po in Hong Kong. The other birders in the hide were experienced locals, and they were preoccupied with doing a serious bird count. They were very effiecient when it came to getting everyone onto anything that they found that was of interest to them, and when they realised that there was a tourist in the hide, they also pointed out things that I'm sure they wouldn't have bothered mentioning to each other. Nevertheless, as someone who is very inexperienced with eastern palaearctic gulls, I had plenty of dumb questions that I wanted to interrupt them with. I felt a bit bad about interrupting their count, and tried to look for times to ask their opinions on, say, a gull I wasn't sure about, when I thought someone wasn't too engrosed. The locals were very helpful.5 minutes before we were about to leave the hide, and after seen some great birds with a lot of help from the locals, a rather messy wagtail appeared right in front of the hide that looked "different" and I wondered if it might be the lugens form of White Wagtail, a bird new to me. By then though, I felt like drawing their attention to a wagtail that I figured they were bound to have noticed, might be one stupid interruption too many. I kept quiet about it. We'd nearly made it to the exit when one of the birders announced, "interesting wagtail. Might be a lugens. Someone get a shot of it, could be the first of the year." I felt so stupid for not bothering them with one more dumb question! If you don't say something, you could be responsible for the whole hide missing out on something.I know this is a different scenario to if you perceive yourself as very new to birding, but there are loads of levels of it, depending on where you are, and normally communication has to be a good thing.</blockquote>

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