It wasn't clear from the OP if only 2009 sightings are allowed, so my apologies in advance if so.
Ah, sorry, but yes, only this year's birds will actually be recorded in the spreadsheet, and I don't think there's much use in adding new records to last year's list... Sorry if I was unclear.
Nevertheless, this should not stop anyone from talking about, posting photos of, or in any other way handle birds from last year. I have just started sorting out my photos from my trip to Japan last year now, and while these records will not be added to this year's list, the photos are still nice...
Just saw a pair of these for the first time today. They were along the shore of the Illinois River near Henry, Illinois, in the central part of the state.
My favourite doves in Europe. The song is amazing, and as we don't have any Turtle doves here, this is the only sand-coloured dove we get.
Do you have "rules" to remember which dove is which in English? The Swedish rules are (translated):
Collared Dove: "So go then, so go then, so go then..."
Wood Pigeon: "So go then so go, so go then so go"
Stock Pigeon: "Go-o? Go-o? Go-o?"
Especially, the Stock Pigeon sounds almost as if it's surprised by what the Wood Pigeon is telling it. Go? When I'm having such a great time here?
The original birds stayed on the ground, scavenging what others had dropped from the bird feeder. The new arrival has been perching on the feeder and was seen feeding from the nyjer seed feeder. I think in fact they are not the same birds, but I can't be sure. Any guidelines on how to tell the difference?
I see sphenisc has given some guidelines (though I must say that I often see Redpolls feeding on the ground at feeding stations; that's the only way we caught them in Umeå this winter), but here are some very representative pictures of Linnets:
(photos taken with the built-in webcam of my MacBook, so apologies for the crap quality...)
Above all, you'll notice that compared to a Redpoll, the Linnet is much more contrastful in its plumage. The red chest of a Redpoll reached the bill, whereas in the Linnet the grey of the head interrupts it. Notice also the brown, rather than striped, back, which is a good way to sort out females and juveniles, which lack the red chest, but still have the brown back, even if it is not as uniform as in the male. Finally, the bill is grey in Linnets of all ages and sexes, and yellow in Redpolls.
Incidentally, the male in this picture nested in a juniper bush
inside the Heligoland traps at Ottenby, which means that it, or its mate, were caught about five to ten times a day, every day for a whole summer. I doubt they got any offspring that year. Another year there was a White Wagtail that did the same...
Indeed! I tried to fit it in with some more unorthodox groups as well. Considering that it doesn't seem to have much of a tail, I thought maybe it could be some kind of small heron, rail or hen, which had just been somewhat distorted by the enlarging of the picture, but you'd have to ignore more or less every other part of the bird except the lack of a tail to make it fit, and either way there's nothing in those groups that's even close...
The only thing that fits in with the white stripe at the back of the wing is some gulls, which again means you'll have to ignore all other parts of the bird. I think sphenisc's guess is the best you'll get, but it does seem a bit bulky in the back for an owl...
No tail, virtually no head, no patterns apart from a white part of the wing that no birds have... you've found yourself a true mystery bird!
The first lot seen were almost a small flock, on the paving under the bird feeder picking up the bits the coal tits drop. About half of these had the red cap on their head but I saw no red breast feathers at all. They were small - certainly no bigger than the coal tits. These were the ones I thought were redpolls. Unfortunately due to poor light the pictures I took were poor quality.
Female Redpolls and juveniles don't have any or only very little red on the breast.
The picture of a linnet in my bird book looked quite different because the bird pictured is craning its neck making it look taller and thinner.
Which bird book do you have? There is no way known to science to recommend the Bird Guide by Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterström and Grant too much. The only criticism I have against it is that it may contain a bit too many birds to chose from, which may deter a beginner (see:
Phylloscopus...), but once you get through the oh-so-common stage where my mother still is, in which everything she doesn't immediately recognise
must be an extreme rarity, despite looking nothing like them, it's the best book ever.
I had a call when I was at Ottenby two years ago from a lady who had seen a "strange bird" in her garden. I guided her through a process of elimination, and concluded that she had seen, perhaps for the first time, a Grey Partride
Perix perdix, which is very common on Öland and had all the characteristics she described. However, she was dead set on Bustards
Otis tarda, which is an extreme rarity in Sweden (ten records or so sine 1900...). Not only is this bird rare, but it also doesn't look like a Partridge in any way whatsoever. The part she caught on to was that the back of both birds are irregularly patterned in brown and black, but whereas the Bustard is banded across the back, the Partridge is banded along it (more or less). The Bustard is also three times as large as the Partridge, has an entirely different shape, and would not under any circumstances have, as she said, nine young ones in tow and have been seen perching on the stone fence around her back garden in a suburb.
But she had never seen these birds before, so they must be a rarity, and then why not a Bustard? To some people -- not only amateurs and beginners! -- just saying that "that species can't be seen here" is like a magic key that locks their determination on that what they saw is exactly this rare bird, whether it makes sense or not to an expert.
I am digressing again, but the whole matter sort of touches on what I believe are the most important rules for birdwatchers, especially beginners:
1) Not all birds need to be, or even can be, correctly identified;
2) The birds in your field guide do not exist, they are merely approximations of real birds;
3) There is a great deal of variation among natural populations of birds;
4) Common birds are more common than rare birds, and thus more likely (1).
While in the present cases (Linnet/Redpoll and Partridge/Bustard) these rules are not immediately applicable, they are often very useful once you get to look at warblers, gulls, and waders. I don't know how many times I've heard someone say that they saw a strange wader, which might ahve been Rare Species X, and then when I looked at it found it to be Common Species Y, but not looking exactly as in the field guide. I think this is especially common among shorebirds, because so many of the
Calidris waders, for instance, only visit Europe during migration, when they can be between the summer and winter plumages. There's an immense spectrum of variation during this period, and you'd need a 1000-page book per species to be able to list every possible variation.
Identifying a species based on one aberrant character rather than on the twenty non-aberrant characters is sadly far too common, even among very experienced birdwatchers. "Default identifying" is much safer, and less likely to be wrong.
I will add all records after lunch.
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(1) This might seem like a tautology, but I think it cannot be said too many times. What you are looking at
may be a rare bird, but the rarer the bird is in the area you're in, the more likely it is that the bird you're looking at is a similar-looking common species that just happens to be slightly aberrant.
