Seeing Species in a Funny Order

RatioTile

RatioTile

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
As a spinoff of the Zoo "Confessions" thread, here's a thread where lifelisters can post ironic trends in the order we've seen species. You might have seen rarer species, whether wild or captive, before encountering more common stuff. Or there might be common species you haven't seen yet and might find it embarrassing!

For example:

1) When it comes to seeing mammal families in the wild, I (from North America) got colugos, tree shrews, civets, and even beaked whales and Kogia whales before encountering any bovid or felid in nature!

2) Peccaries (captive): I got Chacoan first, white-lipped second, and collared third - the reverse order of their commonness in the wild!

3) Tapirs (captive): I got Malayan first, Baird's second, mountain third, and Brazilian last.

4) Mambas (captive): I got Jameson's first, western green second, eastern green third, and black last - the exact opposite order of their commonness in captivity, per Zootierliste.

5) Baleen Whales (wild): of the meager 3 I have so far, I got gray whale first, North Atlantic right whale second, and humpback whale third.
 
I saw my first Shoebill, gharial, pesquet's parrot and first pangolin before I saw my first Maned wolf, jaguar, aardvark or sloth!

I first saw Shoebill in 2024, gharial in 2022, pesquet"s parrot in 2024, all in Pairi Daiza. My first pangolin ( at Prague) was actually just before my first Maned wolf and aardvark. I've yet to see my first jaguar. And I've been to zoos with sloths, but always had bad luck until this July.
 
I've seen, in order of first encounter, Narrow-striped Boky, Spotted Fanaloka, Ring-tailed Vontsira and Grandidier's Vontsira, four out of the five euplerid species present in captivity, all extremely rare in European collections. I have not seen Fossa, the fifth one, which is by far the most prevalent in zoos.
 
Not quite the same thing as it's direction rather than time, but I always enjoy that, despite their relative distributions in the Atlantic, I saw my first wild albatross comfortably further north than my first wild walrus (with neither being in the normal range).



Black-browed Albatross at RSPB Bempton Cliffs, 31st July 2021 - ZooChat / Black-browed Albatross at RSPB Bempton Cliffs, 16th April 2022 - ZooChat

Atlantic Walrus, Tenby (Pembrokeshire), 24th April 2021 - ZooChat / Atlantic Walrus, Tenby (Pembrokeshire), 24th April 2021 - ZooChat
 
For wild species:
  • Seen Southern Cassowary multiple times but never an Emu
  • Green Ringtail Possum but not Common Ringtail Possum
  • Olive Sea Snake before Eastern Brown Snake
  • Lumholtz' Tree-kangaroo before Eastern Grey Kangaroo
For captives:
  • Nototheniidae (cod-icefishes), Harpagiferidae (plunderfishes) and Bathydraconidae (antarctic dragonfishes) before Centrarchidae (freshwater sunfishes)
 
DaLilFishie said:
Green Ringtail Possum but not Common Ringtail Possum
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Still not over this and Chinese Pond Heron before Reed Warbler. (have you seen the latter yet :p)

Anyways!
Think for me it'd be,
Malleefowle & Mallee Emuwren before Australian Darter [the latter being my 269th bird for Aus)
Orange-Bellied Parrot before White-Naped Honeyeater (and proceeding to find a Plains Wanderer right after :3)
Grey Falcon but not Brown Goshawk.. (to be fair I've encountered multiple Tachyspizas in flight that I haven't wanted to 'tick', but even then my second [with my first being a Sparrowhawk] was less then a week back compared to Grey Falcon more than a month ago!)
Leach's Storm-Petrel before both Osprey and Brahminy Kite was quite comedic during Cyclone Alfred.

All wild birds from me, can't think of anything too egregious on any other fronts, a bit annoying that I don't have Squirrel Glider considering I'm based in SEQ but I feel that's more down to observer effort/time in field than anything (how most of these things happen anyways!), I do have Brush-Tailed Phascogale from SEQ but I don't believe they're extremely rare or anything.
 
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Despite spending a couple weeks in their range last year, I have not seen a Greater Roadrunner in the wild. I have, however, seen a California Condor, Willow Ptarmigans, Harlequin Ducks, Marbled Murrelets, a Long-Tailed Duck, and a Black-Bellied Whistling Duck
 
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I saw wild Turkestan shrike, black browed albatross, pied wheatear, white-tailed lapwing, Hume's, dusky and Pallas's warbler, European bee-eater, black-throated thrush, and lesser spotted woodpecker (amongst others and all in England!) before I saw my first wild bullfinch.
 
Osedax said:
My first wild Pardalote was the Forty-spotted. It then took me another 4 years to see any of the more common species.
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Just thought of another one, this time with the order I have seen the subspecies of the Bare-nosed Wombat in the wild. The first one that I saw was the Bass Strait Island Wombat, then Tasmanian Wombat and I still haven't seen the Mainland subspecies of Bare-nosed Wombat in the wild!
 
Oh I have some very funny ones from my time birding and at zoos.

Birding:

Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfisher (@DaLilFishie :p) before Torresian Imperial Pigeon, Azure Kingfisher, Torresian Kingfisher and Metallic Starling.
Stubble Quail and Painted Buttonquail before Brown Quail
Regent Parrot but no Apostlebird
White-rumped Sandpiper and Pectoral Sandpipet before Red Knot and Common Sandpiper

Zoos:
Leadbeater’s Possum but no Capybara
Snow Leopard but no other Leopards
Eld’s Deer before European Fallow Deer
Orange-bellied Parrot before any Amazon sp or African Grey Parrot
 
I saw a brown hyena before seeing a spotted hyena. They were in fairly quick succession in the same zoo. I saw wild spotted hyenas later that summer and to make it more strange I saw a roadkilled striped hyena at the end of that trip.
 
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