What kind of birding do you find most challenging?

[primavera]

Is it the wandering through the forest hearing all around you chirps which you will never, ever actually see to identify? Or is it agonizing over whether the bill on that greater or lesser yellowlegs is really two and a half times the length of the skull or closer to two and three quarters? Or is it sifting for hours through a flock of over a thousand Canadian geese hoping to find that one, solitary Brant? Or how about identifying the infinitessimally tiny, back-lit speck of some swiftly-moving accipiter a mile overhead?

Personally, I'm going with empidonax flycatchers, which have always driven me bonkers. And with David Sibley getting paid by the species, he's no doubt identified an additional 400 species which can only be distinguished by electron microscopy...

[XemaSab]

1. Gulls

they all look alike.

Moreover, I don't care. They would probably be less alike if I cared, but I don't.

Tragic.

[blindpig]

2. warblers

and most canopy birds. All of that looking up gives me a stiff neck. And it conflicts with my reptile hunting. Spring males are easy enough IF you can find them in the new foliage, fall birds are easier to see but can be maddening as the fall patterns often don't match the field guides, displaying piebald premutations of the breeding plumage.

[semillama]

3. Gulls for sure

I spent a cold afternoon scanning through hundreds of ring-billed and herring gulls in Cleveland, looking for the Iceland and Glaucous Gulls that had been reported. I did see one bird with what may have been white wings, but it was sleeping on the ice with its head tucked in and at a bad angle. Talk about frustrating.

Empidonax flycatchers are also a bear, but it's also really satisfying to ID one through habitat and song. What sucks is to stare at one for fifteen minutes, waiting for it to sing.

I'm betting that pelagic birds beat everything - all those descriptions of "Black birds flying swiftly towards the horizon" which I read sound horrifying. but I still want to go on a pelagic trip for sure!