I thought it was just me! lol
Found a lovely snake molt and upon closer inspection… 
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I’m pretty sure that I’ve fallen for nearly every one of the usual things including the tire remnant turtles, the fall webworm moth nest Ruffed Grouse, the power cable joint Loggerhead Shrike and the not an insect’s larval fecal case but just bird poop https://inaturalist.ca/observations/30576360
In spite of all that, I think my best “I’ve been tricked” was from this photo from 2019:
I was so convinced that this was some sort of insect egg case that I submitted the photo to BugGuide but nobody had a clue. Every now and then I’d go back to try to figure out what it was with no luck.
It wasn’t until earlier this summer of 2022! that I realized that it was peanut butter that had fallen from the birds’ peanut butter feeder above and landed on the solomon’s seal leaf below.
Yep, I was well and truly tricked!
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One time I was kayaking in a lake with some of my friends, they found this alligator and they wanted me to come look at it. They were really scared and got out of there kayaks, i went over to go check it out they were telling me not to, but I went. I real close and it looked just like a gator the current was making it look like a gator and there were knots on the log that look like eyes. So I was convinced that it was an alligator, but to be sure I reached out my paddle and touched it and it did not move so I got extremley close to it and touched it with my hands and movied it with a paddle and sure enough it was a log.
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This thrasher would have tricked me into thinking I’d found a rare melanistic individual if I hadn’t known the circumstances behind its coloration:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/98411542
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I get duped pretty often when I see stuff that I think is trash and when I mean to pick it up that trash suddenly moves away. I suppose my ageing eyesight is to blame in those cases.
What makes me feel pretty stupid though is a wild cherry tree that grows very close to an olive tree in my neighbourhood. Twice now, in different years, I got tricked into taking pictures of very strange-looking fruits on that olive tree, assuming some disease maybe? Both times only after taking a number of pictures did it dawn on me that those where fallen cherries that got caught on the olive twigs when they dropped from above.
Here is a more recent example of unidentified something that I haven’t figured out yet:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/132115192
At first I thought it was sheep wool, but in that area no sheep has ever set foot. I assume it is another case of some plant part dropped from above to fool me.
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Quite interesting reading all the instances :
Two instances (or sets of)
*One
Many years ago in our college campus there was a path laid with rock slabs (tiles), on a series of these slabs were fossil imprints of ferns or fern like plants… We got excited , took many pictures and were generally chuffed about it. Turns out they weren’t fossil imprints but probably marks left by some action, of maybe, water)
Two
Birding in pine forests where there are owls - and more importantly owlets.
The upright cones of Pinux roxburghii and Cedrus deodara are very much like the small owls / owlets esp in the forest darkness and even when just being seeing from a distance
In fact it was such a oft repeated phenomenon of saying owl and it turning out to be a cone that we had a nick name for ourselves कौन ऊलू (Pronounced Cone Ullu)
“Cone” meaning “who” in Hindi and of course the “Conifer Cone” in English, and “Ullu” meaning owl and also a gentle pejorative for “being fooled”
Of course over the years there is an accumulation of “being tricked” instances, I guess that comes with the territory of paying attention to what i around us.
PS - edited for better reading and making some corrections
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That’s interesting. I wonder why owls are associated with being fooled or stupid?
In the local vernacular here, the Bubo bubo (and by association all owl-like birds, of course) is called çus (pronounced choose, with a brief oo sound), and the same term is also used in the meaning of fool, dummy, twit.
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Interesting - in Germany (and I think most English-speaking countries?), owls are more associated with wisdom than foolishness.
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Absolutely, owls have always been depicted as wise. I was quite surprised to learn that çus in Friulian is used like ullū in Hindi.
According to German Wikipedia, in India owls have since ancient times been considered stupid, and are mentioned in this sense in the Panchatantra which dates back to 300 CE. And that has spread through Europe in later centuries. According to English Wikipedia, the Latin version was translated into Italian in 1552 which in turn later became the basis for the first English translation in 1570.
But why would owls be considered dumb to begin with? Perhaps for the same reason that they may be considered wise here, i.e. because of the fixed, steady stare?
I have also wondered why ? maybe time to start asking around.
Strangely Owls are considered the mount of the Goddess of wealth - Laxmi and are welcomed into homes, which does not show up in the wikipedia page
Lakshmi is very often shown with one or two elephants, known as Gajalakshmi, and occasionally with an owl.[50] Elephants symbolize work, activity, and strength, as well as water, rain and fertility for abundant prosperity.[51] The owl signifies the patient striving to observe, see, and discover knowledge, particularly when surrounded by darkness. As a bird reputedly blinded by daylight, the owl also serves as a symbolic reminder to refrain from blindness and greed after knowledge and wealth have been acquired
Also sadly owls are a key bird i black magic / tantric ceremonies where they are ritually sacrified. But this is legally and now socially also frowned upon.
And sorry for the digression from the main topic.
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“Hybrids” like this one always fool me. Obviously a rare One, and only one example of Pandorea jasminoides x Pulcaria paludosa:
Explanation: There’s a house on the other side of a tall fence dropping flowers on the “weedy” plants I like to observe. Not even in the same genus or family so they can’t hybridize.
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Some falconers even consider them dumb due to the fact that they tend to not react visually ie. blinking when you clap in front of their face. They rely on their sense of hearing like we rely our sense of sight, and so their sense of sight is secondary like our hearing is.
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Today something opposite happened to me, I thought there was a red plastic thing inside a bush when it was a Northern Cardinal!
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Kind of similar — I thought I spotted a bright red Summer Tanager in the riverside bosque I hiked this morning but when I aimed my camera at it, it was a Christmas tree ornament. And there were other ones. Someone decided the woods needed a scattering of holiday ornaments.
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When I found my first Fulcidacini I instantly recognized it for what it was. Unfortunately, it dropped of the blade of grass it was on before I could grab it. Not long after I spotted another one. Hoping to redeem myself for my clumsiness, I put my hand below it to ensure I did not repeat the same mistake, slowly reached out, and grabbed it. I then went and washed the caterpillar feces of my fingers.
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I found the picture again. Man-made metal sculptures used as garden decorations that several of us tried to figure out the plant species for…
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Not manmade but still got tricked. Late one night I waded into a cattail marsh with a headlamp, chasing the clicking call of what sounded like a Yellow Rail calling deep in the vegetation. I sunk up to my waist in the deep muck but kept going, hoping to see a bird I had not seen before. When I finally got close and put my light on it, it was a Blanchard’s Cricket Frog. Still sort of cool but not something I’d have crawled through mud to see.
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Within the same hour:
sees a stick … “SNAAAAAKE”
sees a broom … “SNAAAAAKE”
Also encountered a bunch of funny-looking flowers in the jungle at night…only then to find out that they were fake…
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