When I have a bird I don’t recognize in my backyard or in one of my boxes, I see it as a chance to learn.
If I misidentify it, I am not embarrassed. The experts often disagree on the fine points of bird identification. There are dozens of birds that look very much alike.
Something special comes out of each error I make — like last year when I thought I had a black-throated blue warbler. It turned out to be a tree swallow, but it gave me my first experience at seeing a tree swallow. And my first experience at seeing a picture of a black-throated blue warbler. Here I was with a pair of tree swallows in my own box raising a houseful of little birds I have never seen in a lifetime of bird-watching.
The most recent case in point was a house wren that occupied one of my bluebird boxes. I looked through my Peterson’s Guide and could not find it. It is one of the busiest, most fidgety birds I have ever had, and it would not hold still long enough for me to check out all its markings. My best guess was that it was a Tennessee warbler.
It became important to freeze-frame it, so Harold Sharp of the Riverwalk Bird Watchers Club brought his telescopic camera over. He soon determined it was a house wren.