Once you begin getting a reputation as a nature nerd, people start thinking that you know everything there is to know about nature, and that just isn't true- at least in the Mom of No's case. The Mom of No is definitely the Mom of I Need Even More Field Guides, and also the Mom of I do NOT eat mushrooms I find in the wild even if it looks like an edible one in the field guide, because I could be wrong and that would be sad. I'm also not very good at botany. I can identify common wildflowers and poison ivy, and sometimes I even mess that up and then end up suffering for weeks.
Sometimes I find something that seems clear-cut, like this adorable woodpecker. When I loaded up my photo onto my iNaturalist account, I thought immediately that it was a downy woodpecker. It looked like a downy, the area is full of downy woodpeckers, and once, earlier in my birding career I'd gotten excited about finding a woodpecker that looked just like this one but had some red on its head, so I got all excited and ID'd it as a hairy woodpecker only to be informed a few hours later that I was mistaken and it was just a regular ol' downy. So, this woodpecker had to be a downy.
Except, this time around, other people thought that it WAS a hairy woodpecker. This was exciting news because I don't yet have a hairy woodpecker on my life list. Some women get excited about shoes; I get excited about adding birds to my life list.
But...wait. It appeared that other people, not the people who had ID'd my downy woodpecker as a hairy woodpecker, but other birder people, were not sure that this woodpecker was actually a hairy woodpecker. One sure way to tell was by the bird call, but the Mom of No absolutely sucks at identifying birds by call. There are a few birds I can ID by sound- belted kingfishers, great blue herons, and amorous cardinals, for example, but I'm nowhere near good enough to tell the difference between a downy and a hairy woodpecker.
I read some articles on identifying downy vs. hairy woodpeckers. The total effect of this research was to confirm that (1) it would have been helpful if the darn bird had stuck around for more than one photo, instead of flying off after I'd gotten just one shot, (2), I need to work on assessing size in the field, and (3), I was still unsure of what it actually was. I really wanted it to be a hairy woodpecker, because I wanted to write "Hairy woodpecker" on my life list. But I didn't want to add it if I wasn't sure. Suppose it was really a downy? Then my life list would be inaccurate, and it would drive me crazy.
People sent the photo to other people, and the identification remained inconclusive. It will probably stay that way, until some stellar birder comes forward and positively identifies this bird based on years of expertise and field experience.
Then, earlier today, I went out for a walk, and I got a photo of a raptor-like bird. I thought maybe red-shouldered hawk, but I wasn't sure, so I didn't commit. Not long after, someone commented that it could be a Cooper's hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk, but according to an article that was helpfully attached, they're a challenge to tell apart. I really want this to be a sharp-shinned because I don't have that on my life list either, but it could also be a Cooper's....
It's all just part of the nature nerd life. I just try to remember back when I didn't know what anything was, and that I'm always learning. Who knows what's out there in the field, just waiting to be the cause of a good ID debate?
Finally, here's a photo of something I can absolutely ID: a red admiral butterfly, my first observation of this butterfly this spring.
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