You should go read Ted Floyd’s post on the ABA Blog right now. It is pretty darn good and the conversation in the comments is worth reading as well, if only because a new term, “Schroedinger’s Gull,” has been introduced into the birder’s lexicon.
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
I love “Schroedinger’s Gull.” I’d like to see the introduction of quantum mechanics to bird identification expanded to include my own theory, which is that birders assume that a bird’s physical structure is stable, and this is not true! That warbler you’re trying to identify, the one that might be a Blackburnian? And then you blink and look again and realize it’s definitely a Pine? It’s not you~! The bird changed itself!