BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ravenwing" data-source="post: 3509919" data-attributes="member: 111213"><p>Fascinating discussion, I only started birding about 6 years ago and have a view - if I haven't taken a photo of it I haven't seen it. I learned to identify birds by taking photos and going through pages of books to ID the species. Next time I saw the species I knew what it was (mostly !). I'm still not good enough to say "that's a Pine Bunting" in a flock of mixed buntings but I am good enough to say "that bird is different" ! Take a photo, go home, look up the books to try to ID it then if I'm really still not sure ask on Birdforum. That seems to bother some people and I'm not sure why as surely the idea is to pass on knowledge. What I find most annoying is a single word answer like "Chaffinch" with no explanation as to why, that is pretty useless to anyone. Back to my original post, about 2 dozen people all said "that's the Pine Bunting" Some took photos, most left happy, and probably still are happy, that they had seen the bird. I wasn't sure when I got home and asked for help or reassurance. What I do know is that if the bird is a Corn Bunting then it was a bit different from the other Corn Buntings there. Fascinating discussion as I said !</p></blockquote><p></p>