Don wrote:

>An example, is broad-winged hawks for us western types. We
>generally get a half-dozen or so approaching our trapping stations in
>the course of a season (out of a total of perhaps 7,000-8,000 birds
>of which we catch and band about 1/2). They invariably get labelled
>as Coops when they come straight in, because their wing-beat looks
>very much like a Coop and, of course, we are expecting the expected,
>not the unexpected.
>
I grew up in the east (Toronto) and cut my hawkwatching teeth
largely on the north shore of lakes Ontario and Erie where Broad-wings can
be incredibly abundant in mid-September as migrants. I am not a raptor
expert (he is on rec.birds if you want to meet him ;-), but one of the
characteristics of migrating Broad-wings over there is that they don't flap.
If the conditions are such that a flap is needed, you might as well go home
since Broad-wings are about as lazy a hawk as they come. It struck me as odd
then that Don would compare Broad-wings with Coops due to flapping style. I
think this is a perfect example of how the conditions and geography of a
site affects the impressions we get from birds. I imagine that the Goshutes
are a mountain site where hawks take a very different tact and migrating
style than in the Great Lakes, and therefore the impressions one can get
from the same species will be different depending on where you are studying
the hawks. I want to reinforce Dennis' point that experience makes a
difference, and the more experience the better. I remember how incredibly
difficult I found it to identify juvenile Western Sandpipers in Ontario
where they are greatly outnumbered by Semipalmateds. Only after looking at a
lot of both species over a number of years have I come to think of this as a
straight forward identification, rather than a difficult one. The first few
were extremely difficult, I was often really sweating as I picked up the
phone, wondering if I was doing the right thing by reporting a flock of 12
Westerns to the Toronto hotline (an unheard of number). The key was lerning
the appearance and variability of the Semipalmated Sandpiper which was
common there. Once I got the hang of it I started noticing that Westerns
were regular migrants through Toronto in late August/early September in
larger numbers than expected. During the early years I kept a good deal of
notes I made on these birds while in the field and took as many photos as
possible, you can't believe how satisifying it feels to look back on those
scribbles and crappy shots and confirm that I was getting them right back
then. I do cringe when I meet a relatively new birder at a shorebird site
armed with great optics and rattling off to his or her (usually its a him)
all the field marks of a Semipalmated Sandpiper from the abundant ID
papers/books and how easy it is to identify them and then call out several
misidentifications while looking at the shorebird flock! It really seems
that as more detailed and better identification material is published,
rather than encouraging folks to look more closely at birds, it does the
opposite and replaces the role of experience and observation. How many times
have you seen people hovering over a dowitcher, book in hand, asking "are
the tertials patterned or not?" but they have skipped the initial step to
age the bird. I guess it may seem as if I am getting critical and negative
here, but I'm not, really. One should be allowed to enjoy birds in whichever
way you choose, if its fun then do it! However, I can't help but feel sorry
for the birders that miss out on the highly enjoyable and satisfying
activity of just looking at birds, and the wonderful discoveries that come
from it. Try it its fun.

Alvaro Jaramillo "You are better off not knowing
Half Moon Bay, CA how sausages and laws are made"
alvaro at quake.net Otto von Bismarck,
but I saw it in a fortune cookie!

http://www.quake.net/~alvaro/index.html