Ornithology: ageing, counting and tracking birds

Most learners meet verhören in a crime novel, where it means to question a suspect, and the reflexive sich verhören is the everyday way to say you misheard. Field ornithology uses the same verb for a third thing: a bird that was verhört was identified by its song or call alone and never seen. Survey forms tend to keep the two apart — gesehen or verhört — because a bird that is only heard can be counted but can rarely be aged or sexed. Nothing in the form tells the three senses apart; the object does. A witness who was verhört was questioned, a quail that was verhört called from a cornfield, and ich habe mich verhört withdraws a claim. The rest of this list follows a bird from the field into a dataset: how it is aged, how its breeding status is graded, how a ring is read back and who decides whether a rare record stands.