Saturday March 18th - False Alarm and Missed ID

 

Saturday March 18^th – False Alarm and Missed ID

          On Friday someone had reported a Pacific Loon complete with several faraway photos at the Findlay Reservoir about an hour south of us.  Although the photos were fuzzy, we noticed a light gray nape on the Loon’s neck.  This is usually a diagnostic feature of a Pacific Loon.  This bird would have been an Ohio lifer, so Saturday morning we went to chase it.

          The conditions were miserable.  It was cold, very blustery and when we arrived a light drizzle was falling.  Findlay Reservoir is actually two twin very large reservoirs.  We walked along the elevated dikes, and the wind was howling.  I felt like I was going to get frostbite on my face.  We spotted some ducks and several Common Loons but nothing that looked like a Pacific Loon.  The wind was buffeting our scope, so it was hard to focus on anything.  At one point Mike said, “I’m tearing up, can you look at these birds?”

          We were frozen and heading back to the car when we saw one more loon in the distance.  We both looked through the scope and said, “That’s him!”  It looked exactly like the photos we had seen earlier with the light gray nape and dark face.  However, later that day one of the top Ohio birders who had also seen the loon posted that he thought it was a Common Loon in strange transitional plumage (changing from non-breeding to breeding).  Now we were questioning our sighting.

          Two days later several other birders again reported a Pacific Loon with no additional photos.  This sparked a discussion among the experts and the consensus was that based on the shape of the bird particularly the “block head” that the bird was indeed a Common Loon.  A Pacific Loon is smaller and has a very smooth rounded head.  We quickly removed that sighting from our list.  The misidentification of a bird, particularly a potentially rare bird doesn’t look good.