I belong to a few bird ID groups on facebook, most of which are actually quite helpful. There's also one which is considerably less helpful, but never really pretends to be. It exists solely to mock the mistakes that people make with bird identification, the more outlandish the mistake, the more they enjoy it. I saw a good one for them today.
A post I saw on social media claimed to have sighted, with 100% confidence, a "shoebill crane" - in Connecticut. A shoebill is not a crane, but is closely related to storks and pelicans. It's a giant, prehistoric-looking bird with an enormous beak shaped like a shoe. They are extremely rare in zoos, with only two US institutions housing them, neither of them within 1000 miles of Connecticut. I myself have only seen them two or three times ever, and the last time was nearly a decade ago at a facility that no longer houses them.
These are not birds like crowned cranes or peafowl that are floating around in the private sector. The chances of a previously-unknown escaped one hanging around New England strikes me as a vanishingly small. The only thing less likely in my mind would this be a vagrant from the bird's native Central Africa.
This isn't the first time I've heard someone absolutely swear that they've seen some sort of rare or unusual animal in a place where I am 100% sure they did not. Tuataras hanging out in backyards in Florida. Ivory-billed woodpeckers flocking around birdfeeders. A gorilla or chimpanzee in central Ohio (it turned out to be a fox). A hyena in Maryland (also a fox). A score of wolves (seriously, has no one ever seen a fox before?).
I have no idea what this bird actually was - if I had to guess, I'd say a night heron - but there's no pictures to go off. I do wish folks would familiarize themselves a little more with their native wildlife. It might make it a bit easier to recognize the animals that come across the backyards.
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