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Originally Posted by RobSutton  The way I remember the difference is that on a Merganser the red of head "merges" gradually into the pale breast underneath whilst on a Goosander it "goes suddenly" - well it helped me! |
Thanks very much Rob, that's very good and I think that should help me a lot. That was the problem I was having, remembering which of the two has an almost clear line across between the red of the head and the paler breast.
I do find memory tricks like that work for me. I learned the difference between moorhens and coots by remembering R is for red and there is an R in 'Moorhens' which are the ones with the Red bill.
I used to have difficulty remembering the name of the drug derived from Foxgloves. Trouble was, every time I saw a Foxglove I'd think "I know there's a drug derived from that, it's ..." and then have a complete memory blank - it would be on the tip of my tongue, but wouldn't come to me. Very annoying. This happened several times, then one day (when it had eventually come to me!) I thought "
Foxgloves - fingers - digits -
digitalis". So I thought I'd just remember 'fingers' when I saw a Foxglove and I'd remember Digitalis. In fact, every time I see a Foxglove I don't even have to think 'fingers', the Digitalis comes to me straight away now - so perhaps the very act of creating a memory trick for it was enough to fix it in my memory.