Normalize not knowing a bird ID.

If it’s your best guess, say so, nothing wrong with that.

Bird ID is hard.

I’m trying to improve my shorebird ID & I think a lot of these pics on the web are just ID’d wrong. I know a lot of raptor ID is wrong, so these shorebird peeps must be a mess.

And yikes, if we’re in the field together, I couldn’t possibly care less if you (and me!) can’t ID a rapidly fleeing speck in the sky. We would just carry on & laugh about birds being jerks, then eat cookies.

Another underrated group for ID is hummingbirds. We’re lucky to have beaut shots on Twitter, but ID’ing those buggers is actually really hard. I remember being useless in Mexico

I was like “ya gotta look at their tails” & failed miserably when all these little green birds buzzed in. “Oh, well, they’re fast & small, that’s why it’s hard”. Then a giant slow one cruised in & I was still like “.........nope”

AND then there’s all the pelagic seabirds, don’t get me started on them.