Worst misidentification (1 Viewer)

[ben_lewis]

While leading a tour at Titchwell someone excitededly shouted "a penguin has just landed on the fresh marsh"!!!
Needless to say it was a young cormorant, luckily it was someone else who mentioned the fact that penguins dont fly saving me having to correct/humiliate them. Made me chukle tho!

 

[Chewbaxter]

While leading a tour at Titchwell someone excitededly shouted "a penguin has just landed on the fresh marsh"!!!
Needless to say it was a young cormorant, luckily it was someone else who mentioned the fact that penguins dont fly saving me having to correct/humiliate them. Made me chukle tho!

:king:

I still struggle not to say 'Seagull' after years of having said it...

And I live nowhere near the flippin' sea - force of habit though!

:t:


Neil.

 

[peterbrash]

I've had some howlers, I have got a tendency to shout things out though.
Picked out a Wilson's phalarope at Cape May in flight which turned out to be a (much more common) stilt sandpiper. Told my friends about this one, remarking that I was glad nobody had been there to see it. Same day I did exactly the same thing! Except this time I shouted 'Wilson's phalarope, get in there you f*%$ing beauty.' to my friends who were stood there non-plussed.

Also shouted Mississippi kite as a killdeer flew past displaying. Called an oil drum as a killer whale on a pelagic too.

Best one I've heard of is when people were ticking a male red-footed falcon at distance in Yorkshire. Some people remarked that it hadn't moved for a while and were raising doubts, other people were claiming they'd seen it in flight or preening, when a rabbit jumped out of it! It was a rabbit hole.

 

[Adam M]

think we all suffer from wishful thinking and the excitement makes us yell things out.
i once called a great crested grebe a great northern diver, tufted duck as a scaup, but nothing too bad. my dad was once convinced he had seen a tawny owl fly low across the edge of a field and disappear into into the tree line, i was convinced, and still am, it was just a female pheasant we had spooked.

 

[luke]

i said a great one at slimbridge a few weeks ago. We were all watching a small reedbed waiting for a bittern to appear when all of a sudden the reeds started to move. Before i actually saw what the bird was i shouted bittern. It was a Blue tit!

 

[Enji]

I went birdwatching with the local bird club last Autumn, when we saw a bird far, far off, in the top of a tree. The leader of the trip said that it looked like a Nutcracker, and pretty much everyone nodded and "yes, it sure does, but we want to be sure" so the only guy with a scope rigged it up, took a good long look at the bird and started to laugh.
It was a Greenfinch. Well, only goes to show that ID:ing birds is not always easy.

Another time me and my mom was out birdwatching, when she suddenly shouted "raptor!" and pointed to something moving far away. I brought up my binoculars and saw... a car.

 

[rb_stern]

There is a small tree on Bon Portage Island, off the SW tip of Nova Scotia, which when silhouetted against the setting sun at dusk, is a dead ringer for a Long-eared Owl. Plenty of people have got their "life" Long-eared, only to have their egos shattered when shown the tree in a different light the next morning.

Richard

 

[carlj]

I've once been watching a white plastic bag on a stick for like 15 minutes once, thinking it was a great white egret
(I had no bins or scope with me so I guess it wasn't that bad.. :eat

20 minutes for a small blue crisp packet, thinking it was a kingfisher!

 

[DaveN]

20 minutes for a small blue crisp packet, thinking it was a kingfisher!

So what you thought was a KF was actually a KP :smoke:

 

[bitterntwisted]

Here's a picture of Levaillant's Cuckoo, picked up on call by my guide in the Gambia, who was an excellent birder...

 

[Jack Dawe]

Found this: http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=17160
Apologies if it's already been mentioned - haven't read the whole thread.

Embarrassed myself yesterday. Distant Feral Pigeon flying over an estuary. Turned out to be an Avocet! Never realised before how pigeon-like they can look in flight at a distance.

 

[Natalie]

A couple days ago I mistook an American Pipit for a Palm Warbler. I even got a bunch of crappy photos of it so I could show everyone my "rarity". Luckily right after I took the pictures I sat down with my Sibley guide and quickly set myself straight.

One time when I was still not very good at songs/calls I went on a birding trip with a local Audubon chapter to a forested pond. I heard an American Wigeon call and blurted out "California Quail" to some people there.

 

[scary-canary]

Here's a picture of Levaillant's Cuckoo, picked up on call by my guide in the Gambia, who was an excellent birder...

What is that?

 

[Edward]

What is that?

Not sure of its scientific name but I'd call it a bin bag.

 

[scary-canary]

Not sure of its scientific name but I'd call it a bin bag.

But if you look closely it's got ears and a trunk - some sort of pygmy tree elephant?

 

[borealowl47]

Those white plastic shopping bags,I am always identifying them
as Snowy Owls!

Darrell3

 

[rokermartin]

Those white plastic shopping bags,I am always identifying them
as Snowy Owls!

Darrell3

We have white plastic shopping bads in the UK and they are often identified as Egrets.

 

[Daddylion]

This is a true story.

The woman says to her husband, "what's that bird call?" "I don't hear a bird" says her husband. "There is was again!" she says. "Honey, all I hear is a squirrel!"

I've often mistaken squirrel "songs" for birds, and Hairy Woodpeckers for sqiurrels and turkeys!

 

[Natalie]

Heh, reminds me of one time I heard a flock of birds chirping in a bush a bit further down the trail... I carefully approached it and as I rounded the bend to get a glimpse of them I discovered that the flock of birds was actually a family of these:

 

[Chlidonias]

what a great thread, good to know everybody cocks up from time to time!

I've called little owls several times that turned out to be things like the ceramic mount on top of electric fence posts; once I briefly mistook a small black rabbit for a blackbird (it was amongst a flock of sparrows and starlings for some reason); I even somehow mistook a skylark for a turnstone (it was on a beach flipping through seaweed, but still....).

I work with kiwi so some of the best stories are reserved for non-birders -- I know its not right to mock people who don't have any real interest in birds, but I'll do it anyway Most of the "kiwi" I have been told about are weka which is understandable but the tourists do wonder why kiwi are considered rare when they had dozens of them stealing their spoons when they were camping. Two American girls said they'd seen kiwi on the banks of the Avon in Christchurch (the best I could suggest was thrushes or female blackbirds -- they were sure they weren't ducks!). Its very common for tourists to see kiwi "all over the roads" while they're driving. Best of the best is the Nigerian guy coming to NZ to study who caught a kiwi in his garden on his first night in the country. He put it in a box and took it to his school, and was told "um, that's a hedgehog..."
(And on that subject there was a kiwi caught in Melbourne in the 80s or 90s that was taken to a wildlife rescue centre where it turned into a juvenile night heron)