Just got back from our little trip, perfectly timed to miss goodies back in the Chicago area such as Townsend's Warbler, Mississippi Kite, Swallow-tailed Kite, and who knows what else.
So we were catching up on our e-mail, checking the latest messages from our local listserve, when we found a couple more difficult identification problems posed by some newbie birders. Not this again. In the last week, different birders have posted photos of the following "mystery birds" that they could not identify: male Bobolink; male Common Yellowthroat; female House Sparrow; and, yes, wait for it, male Mallard. Seriously.
We love new birders, and we try to help them all we can, but c'mon, you are a complete and total moron if you can't identify a male Bobolink perched in the middle of a meadow. There's nothing *even close to that* that isn't a Bobolink in your bird book, not even in that cheapie field guide to North American birds we saw a few years that was produced in China. Just taking pictures of random birds and then asking other people to identify them while sitting in front of the computer is *not* birding. It's not even birdwatching. It's a waste of time, and it is extremely annoying. If you've got your Sibley's or Peterson's in front of you, or even an old Golden Guide, and you can't identify a male Mallard, there's no hope. Just give up and donate your equipment to Birder's Exchange.
The problem (besides the fact that you don't learn anything when other people identify your birds for you) is that these kind of pointless questions are driving a lot of experienced birders away from reading and posting to their local or state listserves. There are probably eight bird clubs in the Chicago area, and probably every single one of them has a field trip somewhere this weekend.
So if you're a new birder, turn off the computer, leave your camera at home, and GET OFF YOUR ASS and start identifying birds WHILE YOU ARE IN THE FIELD instead of while you're in front of the computer.
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9 comments:
Grumble.
Also, if people look for the bird again instead of trying to find it in their Golden or Peterson guide, they might actually see it again.
Boy, as a listowner in a different state, I've so wanted to post such a message as yours. I would have been torn a new one by some list members telling me to be more patient with beginning birders....blah blah blah...I'm patient with beginning birders, but I'm not patient with idiots! Thanks for posting that. I dare you to post it to your listserv (or Yahoo Group)
No way, we're too chicken for that!
Someone did post something similar a while back on the Illinois list, we were going to discuss it here but ran out of time. We'll see if we can dig it up. But this is obviously something that is happening now in multiple states, as almost everyone can now afford a cheap but decent digital camera.
In my area, and I'm sure in other areas too, there are some people that take excellent photos but don't have always have a good idea about what they are seeing. They post on the local listserv links to their latest photos, as well as identification queries. At times I will post the correct identification on their website. Sometimes I am quietly rolling my eyes while doing this, but I keep it to myself. And the photogs I'm thinking of aren't idiots, just better at photography than identification.
Every once in a while I see that a birder is so offended by rudimentary identification skills of a photographer that he looses all common decency and leaves a really snarky remark on the photog's website. I recently realized that one such photographer is no longer posting very often on the listserv. I don't know why this is so, but I do hope that it not because of the rude comments left on his website. You're not going to improve identification skills or have a person like your group by being rude or patronizing to his face (virtual or real-life).
The internet makes this kind of laziness possible. Photographers who ask for help with easy obvious identifications aren't making even the slightest effort to identify the bird themselves. In that sense they AREN'T birders, since trying to identify the birds we see is what birding is largely about. I can understand a newbie being confused or wanting confirmation with a bird like a female House Sparrow, which is small and brown and has other small brown confusion species. But I would be curious to ask the person who posted the Mallard photo "what do YOU think it is?" as a starting point. The answer would probably be somewhere along the lines of "I was just hoping you would tell me what it is." And you are right, that is annoying.
Here in Minnesota we had two photos and the newbies asking the listserv for ID help. Both were female cowbirds.
Yup, we had female cowbird photo quiz this week as well, along with a perched Red-Tailed hawk.
We suppose that a female cowbird could be rationally confused by a newbie as a female bunting or something, bu they're just not trying if they don't even suggest cowbird.
Someone here thought he had an odd coot (three weeks earlier). Then, someone else suggested a tropical species of coot as a possibility. The first person did some research and realized that he may have seen an immature moorhen.
As a fairly new birder (3 years) who's had my own "duh" moments, I laughed out loud. I'm in total agreement. It's not just birding. There are a lot of lazy people in the world who want you to do it for them.
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