A waterbird that always evoked The Phantom of the Opera was long mistaken for a young cormorant. A simple image search revealed its true identity—the Eurasian coot—turning assumption into discovery.

2016-02-17

Today, there was yet another very pleasant discovery.

Whenever I see the bird shown below, it always reminds me of The Phantom of the Opera, and I had arbitrarily decided that it must be a young cormorant.

But just a moment ago, I thought, “Wait a second,” and searched for images of cormorants—only to find that not a single photograph matched this bird.

So I typed in “waterbird like the Phantom of the Opera,” and there it was, among a series of images of waterside birds.

To my great embarrassment, it turned out to be a completely different species with a fine name of its own: the Eurasian coot.