There comes a degree in any neighborhood the place you earn a status, one thing you might be related to. No, not like that. On Scilly, I’m often known as ‘seal lady’. As a Marine Mammal Medic, I’m one of many individuals referred to as upon to wrestle sick child Grey Seals into luggage and assist the vet stick thermometers up their bums. This status has expanded, and I’ve assisted an injured Peregrine Falcon and a Short-eared Owl, two feral cats and various nestling passerines. Most just lately, I used to be requested if I might cease a territorial Blackbird from attacking the homeowners of the flat on which it was nesting.
With so many wonderful birders on Scilly, for years I prevented questions on identification. This has, worryingly, been altering of late. ‘It was sitting on the fence and regarded form of yellow.’ ‘It was black and white and hopping alongside the bottom.’ ‘Here is an vague smudge on my cellphone, what’s it?’ My solely confirmed triumph was a cracking male Snow Bunting on St Agnes this spring, described by the proprietor of the Turk’s Head and subsequently refound just a few days later. But I really feel the stress rising. On Scilly, something can occur. I’m going to mess this up sooner or later.
So, I forged out the online and requested birders for his or her tales of ID woe. Everyone has them. The second you choose up your binoculars, you may be bombarded with elaborate descriptions asking for assist. There’s a well-known one from the RSPB the place somebody reported a chook with purple on its head feeding on the chook desk. European Robin. No, it is feeding on the chook desk whereas standing on the bottom. Eh? It turned out to be a Common Crane.
One county recorder recounts a chap who acquired in contact a couple of Eurasian Dotterel in his again backyard in Widnes: a plump chook with a chestnut physique with some white speckling, white stripe above the attention and brownish cap, quick darkish invoice, longish yellowish legs. Yes, that does sound like a dotterel, besides: it is operating out and in of the greenhouse. It turned out to be an escaped Northern Bobwhite. Another phoned to report a big, white-chested chook with darkish brown wings in her backyard, sat subsequent to her fishpond. A sparrowhawk maybe, however no, she was adamant it was the dimensions of a Labrador. It turned out her backyard was an acre in measurement, the pond was a lake, and it was an Osprey.
A ”Eurasian Dotterel’ reported as operating round a backyard to a county recorder transpired to be a Northern Bobwhite (Andrej Chudy).
Numerous the time, the web is guilty. Fledgling European Robins change into Twite, Common Swifts change into ‘child falcons’, Common Buzzards are almost at all times Golden Eagles, and Tufted Duck is well mistaken for Smew. There are a lot of descriptions of supposed parrots that develop into something however parrots; aside from when your pal, who has just lately moved to London, is complaining concerning the loud inexperienced birds outdoors her window. They are certainly Ring-necked Parakeets. Hoopoes are reported at a worrying frequency, though half the time they have been photographed in Greece. Occasionally individuals strike gold, and uncover one thing uncommon, just like the Green Heron in Pembrokeshire discovered by an MP in 2018 or the American Robin in Sussex in early 2022, which was initially seen by a birder’s accomplice.
Often, birds are precisely as described. ‘It was a smallish black chook’. Blackbird. ‘It seems to be like a crow.’ Crow. Bill Oddie famously mentioned that puzzling birds had been almost at all times Jays, however I’m inclined to agree with Tom from Twitter: 81% of the time it is a leucistic Blackbird. In these circumstances, it’s crucial to respect a studying course of for people who find themselves not conversant in birds. I’ll by no means chortle at anybody who asks me a birding query, though I’ll desperately want that they had requested somebody who knew what they had been speaking about.
My favorite story by far was a well mannered trade between a birder, performing in an expert however unnamed capability, and a lady who was satisfied she had photographed a useless juvenile Common Kingfisher. After a number of painfully courteous but argumentative emails, the girl lastly concluded, in step with the consensus, that this was actually a bag of canine poo hanging from the tree. I might chortle, however birders on Scilly as soon as stared for hours at a immobile Common Nighthawk, solely to find it was a cowpat. You see? We all make errors.
