Identifying birds can be more than ‘manual’ labor sometimes

I was reminded this past week of how hard it can be to identify birds. Field guides often show just a few plumages of most species, leaving inexperienced birders with the notion that identification is straightforward.

Some gulls take up to four years to reach adulthood and each year of that gull’s progress from juvenile to adult has a very different plumage. Shorebirds have adult breeding, adult non-breeding, and juvenile plumages. Most field guides don’t have enough room to depict all of the various plumages that a birder may encounter within a single species.

Inexperienced birders may not recognize that and be misled into thinking all the different looks of a species can lie within the pages of their favorite guide.

Orioles can pose some exceptionally tough identification challenges. Baltimore orioles have adult male, adult female, immature male, and immature female plumages. And, there can be a tremendous amount of variability within each plumage, especially in the immature birds. Add another species into the mix, like a Bullock’s oriole, that does rarely occur here and can appear superficially similar to a Baltimore, and you can be presented with a really tough identification challenge.

An oriole was photographed in Charlotte last weekend that presented just such a challenge. Very experienced and highly respected birders across the state were divided on the identity of this apparent immature female bird. Some came down in the Baltimore oriole camp while others thought it might be a much rarer Bullock’s oriole. A photo of the actual bird accompanies today’s column.

What complicates this identification is the overall drabness of the bird. There are some fairly bright yellow areas but these are restricted in size compared to a typical Baltimore oriole of the same age. Bullock’s females have drabber yellow and a much reduced amount of it.

Further, there are other characters that suggest Bullock’s oriole and some that seem more suggestive of Baltimore. Sometimes the answer can come down to the shape of the wing bars or overall brightness of the yellow; and sometimes birds just have to go down as “unidentified” which is what will probably happen here.

For more on oriole characters, check out my blog at Piedmontbirding.blogspot.com

This story was originally published January 14, 2016 at 9:45 AM with the headline "Identifying birds can be more than ‘manual’ labor sometimes."