Out of the Box!

Stringing In The Rain....Just Stringing In The Rain...

I want to talk about what none of us....and I mean....NONE of us ever want to admit. That, yes, sometimes we make the teeniest of tiny mistakes when it comes to our coveted bird ID.

Now I am not talking about the blown call that you might make when you are out by yourself. No. I mean the "Super String." Where you "string" the bird so bad that for days on end you just want to sit in your darkened basement and smack your head repeatedly with your Sibley's* and swear that you will take up mushroom watching as a new hobby.

Well. We do not want to lose any birding enthusiasts. So how do you deal with the potentially devastating fallout from your "super string"?
There are several schools of thought on this subject. Murphy's Law will dictate that your Super Oratorical Ornithic Yammer of Biblical Proportions will undoubtedly occur right in the middle of a gaggle of birders. So you say, "Skip. You have had lots of experience with just this problem. What would you recommend that I do?"

Well here are a few pointers that I have found useful:

1. Blame it on the weather. "My eyes were watering from the sub arctic 60
degree winds".
2. Blame the call on your glasses, binocular, scope, field guide or hat. Break
out a cleaning cloth and start to furiously clean your binos explaining, "Oh
man!! I forgot to clean my glasses since I came back from birding the
Amazonian Paramo in Berundi, Australia." Hopefully everyone will be
impressed with your world travels and amazing grasp of geography. Just to
let you know I never clean my glasses, binoculars, scope or hat. Just in
case I need an excuse.
3. Look at the person next to you and say, "Thats the dumbest call I have ever
heard." Then duck and weave and try to blend in with the other birders in the
confusion.
4. Blame your bad call on suspect information from some famous personality.
This works well if you have had them in a class before. I personally blame
all kind of bad calls on Pete Dunne and Clay Sutton. But, I never blame
anything on Pat Sutton or Louise Zemaitis.I do not want to get my butt
kicked. Write a list of names on an index card which you can keep in your
pocket and when the need arises pull out your card and blame away.
5. Quickly break into a foreign accent and pretend your new in town. If you
have forgotten that you are with your local birding group go directly to #7.
6. Call out another bird real loud. Preferably a rare and endangered species or
even an extinct species as this usually creates quite a stir and your blown
call will quickly be forgotten.
7. If nothing is working do what I do and fall to the ground and start rolling
around, foaming at the mouth (this is always effective), speak in tongue
(learn a few Greek, Latin and Arabic words and feel free to throw these in as
needed), and do the "frying bacon." This usually freaks people out so bad
that they will completely forget your stupid call.
8. Cry.
9. Or else as a last resort you can admit that you made a mistake. Now I know
what you are thinking. "Nelson are you out of your ever luvin mind?" Now I
only recommend that you use this as a last resort. This is an extremely
radical ploy on your part to throw everyone off. Accepting responsibility for
a bad call or a boneheaded misguided stupid stupid decision is just plain
Un-American. So please be very careful when using this potentially
dangerous and subversive tactic.
Notes: Caution should be exercised about over using #7. Your local birding club will start giving you the wrong meeting times and locations for field trips. I've noticed that my copy of our schedule appears to have been tampered with.

* Please note that if you are European (as George Bush has discovered there are actual people who live in Europe) please use the hardback version of "The Complete Guide to the Birds of Europe" to get the full effect. I have used the paperback version in the past and feel that it is not up to the task at hand.

Now I would love to hear from you about your best stringing of a bird. So to get the ball rolling I will tell you about my little missed call. It came at Roll Over Pass in Texas. Oscar Carmona, Lyn and I were scoping out some terns with a Brown Pelican on a sandbar. Are you with me so far? I wanted to get Lyn and Oscar to check out a particular tern and I used the Brown Pelican as a reference point. This is where things started to go terribly wrong.

Unfortunately there must have been some kind of rare inversion caused by what I believe was a local weather event know as "el Doritos". This caused a misunderstanding by Oscar and Lyn of what came out of my mouth.

Now I know what I said, but unfortunately what they heard sounded alot like "Brown Penguin" which is not a local bird in Texas (still pending a decision by the state records committee)....or anywhere else.

Now Oscar and Lyn stop what they are doing and look over at me hunched over my scope.
"Brown Penguin. Huh?" Oscar asks in disbelief. Lyn covers her eyes and shakes her head.
"Well..yea..the tern beside the Brown Penguin" says I still focused intently on the tern.
"Brown Penguin? Where do you see a Brown Penguin?" asks Oscar. Lyn is holding her head as she knows whats coming next.
I look over at them staring at me in disbelief as I furiously start to wipe the lens of my scope.
"Penguin....who said Peneguin?" I look at Lyn.
"Thats the stupi....." She cuts me off. "Don't even try it Buster!!!"
I reach for my list in my pocket.
Lyn is shaking her head, "Your list went through the wash last week."
" Gee you Gringos are mucho loco...."
Oscar is now shaking his head. "Thats a really bad accent Nelson."
Lyn turns to Oscar. "If you think that is bad just watch."
"Great Auk flying", I yell pointing behind Oscar and Lyn.
They don't even budge.

Down on the ground I go arms and legs flailing in all different directions. Foam appears at my mouth as I use every Pig Latin word that I know. I'm doing the frying bacon right there on the sand.

"Come on Oscar. Let's go. He'll start to cry next." says Lyn gathering her scope.
"Does he do this often?" asks Oscar.
"Well not all of the time." says Lyn "Just when ever we go birding"

Posted by Yungas Manakin at February 21, 2005 01:50 AM