Most misidentified birds in your area (2 Viewers)

[Stephen Dunstan]

Depends where you go, hard to miss Pheasant at Hillswick I'm afraid.

John

I know. It doesn't alter the fundamental point.

 

[Prestdj]

At my local patch Whitburn Coastal Park the two main confusion species seem to be Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Rock Pipits, whilst both are seen occasionally and Rock Pipits are a common winter visitor 0.5km to the south of the Park whenever I see these on a visitors ebird checklist, but no Great Black-backed Gulls or Meadow Pipits I tend to think that they have misidentified.

One other factor that I wonder whether is relevant is memory failure. I know often when completing ebird lists I struggle to remember whether I saw some of the common species like Woodpigeon that I just tune out, I assume I must have as it is hard to miss them so put them on the list. If this approach is applied at locations that an observer is not overly familiar with could explain some records such as Magpie on Shetland.

which is why ive always gone birding with a note book and record everything even when just out and about, it still have books going back nearly 40 years it documents my birding life

 

[raymie]

In my area you simply cannot trust eBird observations of Purple Finch. Purple Finches are very uncommon here (but certainly around), but misidentified House Finches on eBird make them appear fairly common.

There were a few escaped African Collared-Doves that happened to be hanging out a specific well-birded location near me that nearly everyone misidentified as Eurasian Collared-Dove (which isn't a common species here).

 

[raymie]

Also pretty sure the vast majority of eBird records of Mallard (Domestic Type) from my area are actually just wild-type Mallards.

 

[Zoroark]

There were a few escaped African Collared-Doves that happened to be hanging out a specific well-birded location near me that nearly everyone misidentified as Eurasian Collared-Dove (which isn't a common species here).

There's a regularly occurring AFCD at a local hotspot that I've seen identified as an EUCD in photos a few times, but EUCD is plentiful there. That individual was controversial before eBird's exotics update last year.

 

[MiddleRiver]

Sharp-shinned and Coopers... Should - in theory - be relatively easy, but in flight, fleeting views... ugh! We have both seasonally.

 

[Larry Sweetland]

Ivory-billed Woodpeckers from areas where people still think they exist? 🤷 (Sorry 😂)

 

[pshute]

Apparently every Buff-breasted Buttonquail sighting for the last 100 years has probably been a Painted Buttonquail.

In search of the buff-breasted buttonquail – the one Australian bird that has never been photographed

Finding the elusive species in far north Queensland is a unique challenge for birders. But the search demands extraordinary enthusiasm

www.theguardian.com

 

[Paul Chapman]

The local Gull studies record a significant number of Herring Gull * Lesser Black-backed Gull hybrids (sometimes just shy of 0.5% of birds or 1 in 300) when undertaking extensive ringing studies of urban Gull populations but the 2022 Avon Bird Report provides only one record for the entire year.... 😀 They must be misidentified away from these studies.

I routinely try and string one of these hybrids as a Yellow-legged Gull every 1st of January. I did so again this year. I identified it as a hybrid but then tried to talk myself into it based on the primary pattern.

All the best

Paul

 

[opisska]

That's why we mostly put large gulls as Larus sp. and move on

 

[TicoTyler]

The most popular field guide to Costa Rica is from 2014. Since then a species (Gray-necked Wood-Rail) has been split into Gray-cowled Wood-Rail and Rufous-naped Wood-Rail. Where I live on the Caribbean side it is Rufous-naped. At least once or twice a week there is a Gray-cowled Wood-Rail listed in the rare bird alert. It doesn't help that a local popular nature reserve has a sign up on their trails where it's labeled wrongly as being Gray-cowled.

 

[TicoTyler]

A few years ago (2018?) I was talking to one of the wardens at Lakenheath, asking about Golden Orioles. He said that they only ever got reported by visiting birders, never by locals. The focus by then was on trying to manage the wooded areas to encourage Lesser Spotted Woodpecker & Nightingale and to more or less write the Orioles off as a thing of the past.

That's another one here. I live near the second-highest Hot Spot in Costa Rica (508 species). For some rare species, the only reports are from people with non-Costa Rican names (aka foreign tourists). Somehow random tourists are managing to see a rare Antpitta but the guides who are there almost every day have never seen one in 10+ years. With helpful comments on the checklist like "seen in forest".

 

[01101001]

That's another one here. I live near the second-highest Hot Spot in Costa Rica (508 species). For some rare species, the only reports are from people with non-Costa Rican names (aka foreign tourists). Somehow random tourists are managing to see a rare Antpitta but the guides who are there almost every day have never seen one in 10+ years. With helpful comments on the checklist like "seen in forest".

Do they pass muster with eBird?

 

[Farnboro John]

That's another one here. I live near the second-highest Hot Spot in Costa Rica (508 species). For some rare species, the only reports are from people with non-Costa Rican names (aka foreign tourists). Somehow random tourists are managing to see a rare Antpitta but the guides who are there almost every day have never seen one in 10+ years. With helpful comments on the checklist like "seen in forest".

I believe what you say but just for the record, do the guides contribute to ebird or are foreign tourists being guided (or not) the only source of data?

John

 

[Xenospiza]

If you look at ebird (or observation.org), quite a few strange records tend to be entered by the same persons...

 

[Farnboro John]

If you look at ebird (or observation.org), quite a few strange records tend to be entered by the same persons...

Indeed but conversely, I am aware there are guides who not only keep their stakeouts quiet but specifically ask their clients to do the same, so absence of data from some places may not be the same as absence of birds..... If a place is a top hotspot there must be a reason for that and it may not be biodiversity as much as presence of specific targets.

John

 

[TicoTyler]

I believe what you say but just for the record, do the guides contribute to ebird or are foreign tourists being guided (or not) the only source of data?

John

Guides usually also upload to eBird. In many cases making the list themselves and sharing with the clients.

 

[TicoTyler]

Do they pass muster with eBird?

Now? No. But in the past, I think there weren't filters for some species. Or the filters might not have caught certain species so the historical data is there.

 

[Kirk Roth]

Now? No. But in the past, I think there weren't filters for some species. Or the filters might not have caught certain species so the historical data is there.

This can become a spiral. Tourists use eBird in trip-planning, and so if there are old incorrect records of a target species, then people will go there expecting a chance to see it. That way, the observer is already primed for a "wishful thinking" misidentification and the mistake feeds itself.

Thus, the importance of good reviewers being attentive to historical records.

 

[TicoTyler]

This can become a spiral. Tourists use eBird in trip-planning, and so if there are old incorrect records of a target species, then people will go there expecting a chance to see it. That way, the observer is already primed for a "wishful thinking" misidentification and the mistake feeds itself.

Thus, the importance of good reviewers being attentive to historical records.

Definitely. And for example, where I live there are lots of reports of Ruddy Woodcreeper. It can (rarely) be found here but it's not currently caught by a filter and is much more rare than the reports would indicate. But I know filters in Costa Rica are very challenging. We have around 900 bird species in around 50,000 km2. And in very small areas there are marked altitudinal changes that drastically change the species composition and rarity. Combined with being a huge tourism destination, we get a lot of inexperienced (regarding the local fauna) birders reporting.