Bird ID: Ask Lots of Questions, Repeatedly

A humorous story: this week I was asked to identify what my excited inquirer called a "very colorful bird that was in their yard."  It sounded exotic.  What colors, I ask?  "Oh, red, and I think green and blue."  Immediately visions of a very rare inland Painted Bunting fill my mind.  I hurriedly open my iPod and show a picture of this amazing bird.  My inquirer isn't sure. That might be it.

The next day I am informed the bird was sighted again, but no one has yet captured a picture.  But we are now sure the head was red, certainly not blue.  Baffled, I ask, "but there *is* green? and there is blue somewhere?  My inquirer isn't sure.  Maybe.  I have no good ideas of plausible candidates.  But that's when the thought creeps into my mind that this is going to be a common bird.  Surely not an escaped parakeet... So I start raising the possibility of woodpeckers.  Not sure, says inquirer, we'll look again tonight.  I ask for as good a sketch as can be drawn.

The next day, the sketch is produced.  Red head? well, I am told, there's red on the head.  A little.  And the green, and blue?  well, no.  We saw a gray back and a white belly.  Mmm. hmm. Not an exotic at all.  The blues and greens are gone.  And this bird sounds an awful lot like a common woodpecker.  And indeed, said bird went to feeders and to the trees.  How big a bird, I ask?  Oh, it's a foot long!  (What?!? at their feeder?!?)  I show a picture of a Pileated Woodpecker.  Nope, that wasn't it.  Well, I say, you overestimated size.  And I show a picture of this bird, a common everyday Red Bellied Woodpecker.  Ah, says inquirer, that might just be it!

What did we learn, Dorothy?  I learned to be sure and ask enough questions, over and over.  Are you sure about those colors?  what colors are where?  how big is the bird? how big compared to, say, a robin or cardinal?  Did it go to feeders? what did it eat there?  And so on.  And I have to assume that the most exciting news to someone else may be old hat to me. 

But it was a fun moment in bird identification.  It is, after all, a very long way from a Painted Bunting to a Red Bellied Woodpecker!