Adventures In Birding Online: The Truth Is Out There...But Not Always.

This is a Least Sandpiper...but I could just post this as a Long-toed Stint, and most birders would be none the wiser. Kind of a bummer, huh? Photographed at Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary, Alameda, CA.

I am the Global Birder Ranking System's #7 U.S. birder. That means I am a great birder and an anointed expert*...there's no point in being modest. Being a leading light of the birding community, my gaze knows no bounds. And that is how I noticed that Dave Irons, an Oregon Bird Policeman, recently wrote to a listserv, "When unknown folks present themselves as authorities on the Internet, you really need to be cautious."

He is absolutely right.

Birding is hard. It is known. Finding birds is hard. Seeing birds is hard. Identifying birds is the hardest of all. And so, in the age of the internets, let us examine one particular aspect of bird identification...the Google image search!

That's right...not only do we have field guides, reference books, eBird and apps, we have the entire fucking internet at our disposal to use as a tool for bird identification.  If you have a bird you are trying to identify and it doesn't quite match your typical sources, you can just say "fuck it" and go cruise the interwebs to find even more pictures of species x and species y. It's really a fantastic thing. Ever wonder what Slaty-backed Gulls look like in Japan? Boom! I would say that covers it pretty well. Do you get stoked on American Dipper pictures? You do?! Well, try googling it, and you will see hella dipper pics. Amazing stuff, really.

So it's that easy, huh? Well...no. If something is too good to be true, then it is not a true thing. It is a lie, a dirty falsehood, just like all the misidentified Philadelphia Vireo photos that litter Flickr. Having just read these groundbreaking words, you might find yourself feeling filthy on the inside, and I don't blame you.

You will notice that the gull link above goes to a site operated the Ujiharas, esteemed experts on gulls who even put a gull book out. And you will note that dippers are singular birds...easy to identify, and lacking any relatives on the continent.

Well, what happens if I look for random Veery pictures?  I only have to scan through a few pics from an image search before I come across this bird, which clearly is not a Veery. Hmm...what about Willow Flycatchers? Wait, what the hell is that?  Well...Northern Goshawk? Yikes. I'm not sure if any of the photographers here are necessarily presenting themselves as authorities on their subjects (lets hope not), but whenever they say THIS bird is THAT species, that's a pretty authoritative act, I reckon.

Ok, why don't we call this bird a hatch year Western X Flame-colored Tanager, put it online, and call it a day? That's what this is, obviously, and who is going to stop me? I kid, my friends, I only jest...this is a Western Tanager, but it is a scary thing that I could just make some fanciful claim and lay it out there. It happens every day. If shit like this keeps you up at night, remember...you are not alone. Photographed at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA.

So, there are two factors at work here with these blatant misidentifications. For one, there are a lot of birders with cameras out there who are just not highly skilled. They make identification mistakes on the regular. Go to someplace like South Padre Island and watch the inaccurate carnage unfold. Secondly, there are a lot of bird photographers out there (who are not birders) who are even worse at bird identification, and a lot of those folks are dying for you to see their images. That's really all there is to it. When surfing the web for bird porn, caution is warranted. Unless you know the source and know you have a highly discerning eye, be very careful about the birds you look up. This is where reputation is huge...trust the folks you already trust! I can peruse the Ujihara gull site and be pretty confident they are not fucking up, despite their difficult subjects, but blindly searching the web for Vega Gull images is a daunting task.

So next time you are having an ID discussion in your favorite birding Facebook group, be careful when referencing online images from people you don't know or trust. You might get burned, and things may never, ever, be the same again.

* = I do misidentify birds, and there probably is one...or two...or three, somewhere in BB&B's sprawling past. I'm not saying Trust No One, but as a modern birder, never turn off your bullshit detector, and you'll be just fine. 

The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: Swallowgate

I have written of sketchy birders. I have written of stringers, assholes, liars, and the clueless. What the Human Birdwatcher Project has not covered are birders who take dishonesty to such a level that it is truly staggering. As the nation's #7 birder, you can bet the Global Birder Ranking System has me plugged deeply in to the national rumor mill. My little birds are everywhere, as Lord Varys would say, and they sing many songs to me. You would not believe what they have been telling me lately...

It all started out innocently enough...a young birder doing a Big Year in his home state. He set out to conquer the state's big year record, and he succeeded. There was press coverage, much fanfare, and glory. But very quickly, things turned for the worst...he tumbled from those lofty heights like a Snow Goose full of birdshot . His big accomplishment was nothing more than a vulgar display of myopic arrogance.

Let's set the stage. The year before he set out to shatter the record, he found a state first Violet-green Swallow, which was photographed...but no one else ever saw it, despite other observers rushing to find it. Of course, it is always suspicious when a single observer has a pattern of finding rare birds that otherwise go unseen...but if there is a photo, who can argue with that? During his big year, more than one of his self-found/single-observer rarities were photographed, so there was no real reason for concern.

The obvious problem with photos is that they can be faked...but no birder would ever do that...right? What would be the point? I can only see one...where you want to convince people that you are a hot-shit birder. You want that reputation, which ostensibly sounds crazy, but that is something that some birders find to be very, very important...perhaps because you have nothing else. In fact, for whatever reason, you want that reputation more than you care about watching birds themselves...which seems to defeat the whole idea of "birdwatching" in the first place, and violates the golden rule of birding: don't lie. You can be a dipshit, you can be unskilled, you can be a bad person, and birders will still tolerate you as one of them. But for god's sake, don't lie.

It has come to light that this birder has done just that...through some brilliant detectivework that make other bird police forces look sloppy and lazy by comparison, his state first photo was discovered to have been taken not in his state at all, but in Colorado. It was a farce, and he got caught...there was something amiss with the bird's tertial pattern, and data associated with the photo put the observer in the wrong state at the wrong time. My little birds tell me that after a period of complete denial that anything was wrong, he eventually claimed that the bird was real, he just thought that he could lubricate the record's passage by The Bird Police by using a decent photo. Of course, no one really believes that, and Violet-green Swallow turned out to not be the only rarity he documented with a photo of a different bird taken in a different state. The big year suddenly wasn't so big at all. State birders were plunged into a dark malaise...the light at the end of this tunnel was a long way off.

This is the closest thing one can get to "treason" in birding. With a fake state record and a fake record-breaking big year to claim as his, this birder is, for all intents and purposes, doomed. No birder will trust him for years to come...he will be haunted by the nightmare ghost of a Violet-green Swallow forever. His betrayal is known to many, and not only is he being actively shunned in his own state, but the entire American scene is taking notice. Instead of being a high-profile birder in his home state, his name is now in the toilet, and it will be for the foreseeable future.

Birders don't need this. Young birders do not need to have suspicions of stringing and lying cast upon them...hell, I'm in my 30s, and I still get doubted by old white birders who don't know they are dealing with #7. No birder needs to have the idea put in their head that they can do this and get away with it. Birders do not need to sacrifice a lot of time and money chasing after birds that exist only to serve as a "tick" on someone's fabricated list. eBird does not need fake data. Birders are hard to get along with as it is...if we can't trust what we tell each other, what do we have? Not anything that can be called a community, that's for sure.

And there you have it. Swallowgate. Take it to heart.

Of All Things Most Shameful and Vile

"The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile." - Plato

Birders...sad news today. An anonymous source from my inner circle recently delivered this screenshot to me. What you see is eBird's California 2013 rankings from a week ago. I would like to direct your attention to Birder Number 4.

Yes. Believe your eyes. Dipper Dan claimed he saw a Northern Giant-Petrel in California waters, which of course has never been proven to happen anywhere on the continent. It is as if he plunged a dagger into his own reputation. This is quite possibly the most depressing misidentification in the history of California birding, although the "Agami Heron" submitted to the state's bird police is good competition for that (not joking).

This man, up until now, was a very good friend of mine...I never suspected he was a sketchy birder. But with GBRS immediately docking him 100 points for such egregious stringing, I don't think I can be seen in public with him for a long time. You have been warned, and would be wise to do the same. View his reports with extreme caution...it is warranted.

The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: Sketchy Birders Part II

Now that we know what a sketchy birder is, we can get into the gory details...

Once you label someone as such, it is extremely difficult for you to think of them in any other light. Are they good people? What are their intentions? Well...who fucking cares?! They're a terrible birder! The best analogy I can make to describe sketchy birders is when kids used to be called poseurs in the punk and skating scenes....they look the part, but are not exactly cut from the same cloth. As such, they are never taken seriously, are always skirting the edges of the community, and are generally considered human scum by the diehards.  Harsh, I know, but I'm only calling it as I see it.

Maybe we need a situation to really understand what is going on here. Lets say, for example, you are on a pelagic trip (for you nonbirders, youre on a boat out at sea looking for seabirds) with a known sketchy (or shaky, shitty, dicey whatever you want to call them....this isn't a technical term I'm using) birder. Chances are that there will be several people on this boat who are aware person X is a sketchy birder, and you will all have an unspoken understanding that you can't trust this person's judgement as far as you can throw them. Thats just how this works. Person X is blacklisted. BUT, everyone loses in this scenario. The sketchy birder inevitably starts calling out good birds that no one else is seeing, and quickly people give up on trying to dissuade Person X that those were Sooty Shearwaters that flew by, not Short-tailed. Sketchy birder becomes ignored. In the chance that our friend Sketchy does correctly spot something interesting, people will not try very hard to get on the bird, and everyone may miss out. Its a cycle of death.

The level of loathing these people can inspire varies, of course. Some birders take pity on them, and do their best to "educate" them whenever possible, hopefully without sounding condescending (this is very difficult). Some birders take the opposite approach, openly denying any rare bird claims a sketchy birder might have ton their face. Some become bitter about the whole topic, and openly share their hateful opinions of various sketchy birders with other, non-sketchy birders. Others simply ignore them and any bird they report.

Of course, one of the most frustrating things about the whole sketchy birder scenario is encountering unknown birders in the field. You don't know who they are, you've never heard of them, or they aren't a local. If they mention seeing a rare bird to you, eyebrows will be raised. This has happened to me a few times, which is incredibly aggravating. Personally, some of this goes back to the annoying ageism in the birding scene I think, which Ive covered in the past. Just recently I told a group of birders about a Pacific Loon nearby, and had some haggard woman repeatedly telling me "there was a common loon diving there 20 minutes ago". This is difficult to tolerate, particularly when you've literally seen tens of thousands of pacific loons. But I digress....

Finally, we get to the subject of The Hybrid Birder. This is someone you know who has great birding skills, but at the same time reports such remarkable things that you don't know if you have any business believing this person half the time. Every region has one of these people. Frequently, one finds themself speculating if these people are mildly retarded, senile, drunk, or have a more-than-recreational drug habit and going out birding all the time. I will venture that these people must be taken seriously to a certain degree, or else we may all suffer from being too arrogant to go look at that Worthen's Sparrow he casually reported being down the street from your house.

Now that we have discussed The Problem in great detail, we must ask ourselves.....what about The Solution? Can a sketchy birder have a change of face? Is there a birder rehab these people can go to? There is no easy answer to The Problem. However, no matter what skill level a birder may be, we always benefit from birding with other people. Its keeps you on your toes, and inspires a little bit of friendly competition to find the odd one out...and frequently, it can be very educational. So if you know any sloppy birders, offer to go bird with them. It may be aggravating, but it will be good for the both of you in the long run.

In the end, there is only one thing we should remember...the only thing more embarrassing than being a crappy birder is being an elitist, snobby one!

The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: Sketchy Birders Part I

The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive has a near-flawless reputation, mustache and all.

So there is a phenomenon in the birdwatching realm known as "misidentification". This simply alludes to identifying a bird as the wrong species. Nonbirders, for example, misidentify almost everything. They call jays bluebirds, finches sparrows, vultures hawks, herons storks....that kind of thing. Beginning birdwatchers, who may have only been into it for a couple of years or less, are extremely prone to this, but most will readily admit that they are not very good yet. They are generally a humble bunch. No big deal, right?

Misidentification becomes a problem when you are a full-blown bird addict, let alone when you are doing actual Science. You need to see birds. Lots of them, particularly unusual ones or ones you've never seen before. At this point in your birding career, properly identifying birds becomes a Big Deal, for several reasons.

1) Pride. You now have a reputation that you probably care about. The better birder you are (i.e. your ability to find and accurately identify birds), the better your reputation is.

2) Since a lot of birds are relatively hard to identify (see pictures of the Common Rosefinch, for example), you need to be sparticularly sharp, or you might miss that Rosefinch thats mixed in with the House Finches at your own feeder.

3) If someone misidentifies a Least Sandpiper for a Temnick's Stint, your 6-hour drive to some god-foresaken sewage pond will be pointless, and you will be pissed.

And so, identifying things correctly is not only important for you to do personally, but you (the average birder) will think its important for other people to do as well. Otherwise, they might not notice that funny looking Bewick's Wren was actually a Dusky Warbler......or, even worse....the Dusky Warbler they told everyone they saw was actually a Bewick's Wren.

Get it? So let's dip a toe into The Heart Of The Matter here. Because people are really excited about seeing new/rare birds, and they often want people to know that they found said rare birds, their emotions can get in the way. Unintentionally, they will simply will a bird to be what they want.  And you know what? It's happened to all of us. Even me.  Even The Great Ornithologist, Felonious Jive...although that was just once. Often we will come to our senses or be faced to examine some crucial piece of evidence and end up making The Right Call, but for some people....that just doesn't happen. Ever. They become chronic misidentifiers. And since birders are always reporting (aka bragging) about what they see (or think they see), people start to pick up on this after a while.

Something you may not realize, nonbirders, is that birders love to gossip. Those of us who miraculously have the ability to carry on a conversation (which is no small feat for a diehard birder) love talking about other birders. We revel in discussing is who has been finding all the hot birds lately, who we think are great, who we think are assholes, and who we can and can't trust. Yeah, it's petty, but being nerds....it's all we've got sometimes. Anyways, those "loose cannons" out there are quickly named, and then the rumor mill distributes these soiled reputations accordingly. If you're a long-time birder and have never taken part in one of these conversations....you might have some cause for concern. We might be talking about you.

This is a topic that I may have touched on before (I checked the 2008 archives just to make sure....boy, that was weird), but if not.....it must be discussed further. Part II is coming soon. A big thanks to The Human Birdwatcher Project for sponsoring this fascinating research.