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Re: On Careful Observation
I guess I'm not quite through with this thread either. I have a couple
of additional things I'd like to say on this.
First, I fully understand the difficulties of identifying
waterthrushes. I see several hundred waterthrushes of both species
every year, mostly on my tours in Mexico (one rainy morning on the
Veracruz trip last October we had several dozen Louisiana Waterthrushes
feeding in the middle of the road along about a kilometer). Sometimes
we can see both species essentially "side by side." I would never
underestimate how hard it is to tell these species apart - some
individuals are really tough to identify. The one from Arizona,
however, is so classically a Louisiana in every respect that it would
be a good example to study for birders wishing to learn more about how
to recognize this species, especially those from someplace like Utah,
where few Louisiana's are seen. My expressed surprise was that there
would be any controversy over this bird in Arizona, where there are
many, many birders with plenty of experience to be able to identify a
Louisiana Waterthrush like this one. As it turns out, the "consensus"
was apparently from the birder's register at the location; the bird was
originally reported and correctly identified by Gary Rosenberg in early
December. However, many birders may not have heard about the report
(Kudos to Birdtalk and Birdnet, and all who submit reports here, for
helping to keep us all well-informed).
Second, the only way to avoid misidentifying birds is to never go
birding. I'm not sure that I misidentify birds any less frequently now
than I did twenty years ago. Hopefully, I'm a bit better about catching
my mistakes. No one should ever feel badly about having called a bird
"wrong," nor should they ever be afraid to admit to having made a
mistake, or to not knowing enough to make the correct identification.
No one will ever learn all there is to know about birds. As I am fond
of telling people on my tours, when one of them (or myself) is caught
in this moment of embarrassment, "there's only one difference between
the experienced birder and the beginner - the experienced birder has
misidentified a whole lot more birds than the beginner."
Good birding!
Mark
Mark Stackhouse
Westwings, Inc.
westwings@sisna.com
801-487-9453 (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA)
011-52-323-285-1243 (San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico)
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