Take our December challenge, manage your garden better for birds, go looking for wildfowl and find your own owls.
IDENTIFICATION is a complicated process. It might be instant: the call of a Grey Wagtail overhead, the sight of a distinctive mark that can immediately tell you that you’re watching something common – a Coal Tit, say – or something scarcer – like a Yellow-browed Warbler or a Rosy Starling. Or you might know that a bird is one of two or three possibilities, but need to concentrate a bit to sort them out: a Common Chiffchaff or Willow Warbler, for example, or a Marsh Tit or Willow Tit.
It isn’t often that you will be totally stumped or see something that needs much more detail to resolve its identity, such as one of the dowitchers or a difficult rare gull. So, it is easy to tell people what to do, but in reality the need to take up a notebook and pencil and follow the ideal procedure is infrequent.
All the same, it is a good discipline to have and to practise from time to time, to ensure you’re properly prepared if you see something more difficult. Look.
Take notes. Assess what you have seen. Look again. Get a better view of a necessary feature: try to view the bird from a different angle. Assess the situation again. Have you got enough to be sure? Is there room for doubt? Can that doubt be removed if only you can see some extra feature, or hear a call? Keep looking!
It is all too easy to jump to conclusions (the greatest cause of misidentifications), to be too complacent, too quick to persuade yourself it is the rarer option not the commoner one. Of course, the bird may have long gone – something like a passing seabird – but if you can, scrutinise it for as long as you can, be sure you aren’t being drawn into some sort of mistake.
Think of a favourite TV character or even a good friend – what colour eyes have they got? You don’t know? Of course you don’t! You really have to look to find out, specifically check out this difficult feature (unless you are very close) to be sure. It’s the same with birds – flitting about in trees, wandering over a distant mudflat, bobbing about on the water; they are not, always, as easy as you think. Rob Hume