(the) #60/1126 is not always easy (or at least quick) to dress and set it correctly...
If the weight with which you load it is heavy enough, compared to the diameter of the rope, it is self-dressing. If it is not, then yes, it requires some care. However, we use "tight" hitches only when we need to "store" some tension in the wraps, so, presumably, we use them when we pull the end(s) forcefully, against the pole. ( I often use hands AND feet to be sure I had taken out any millimetre of slack I could ). In such cases, the knot is self-dressing.
I do not understand this: tied in the bight (and in the air), the knot is neither the one nor the other hitch(es) until to the moment when one decides how to apply it to the object that needs to be wrapped.. or not ?
Not !
There is no hitch without the object - in other words, the object ( the spar, in this case ) plays a vital role in the knot - it is, in a sense, a "passive" part of the knot.
I find that this is actually a kind of confirmation of what I have written!
No, I mean that the knot is not actually tied, its tying is not finished, until=unless you insert the spar in it - or wrap the spar with it. So, as the knot is not finished, it can not be "
the one or the other hitch" : it is not either = neither of them. Only when you have "tied" it, when you have made anything that will determine its geometrical form after it will be tightened, only then you can tell what knot it is ( and, sometimes, not even then, because, in physical, not-ideal knots, topology does not determine geometry uniquely ),
Therefore, what you have "tied" in the hand is not a finished knot, which you could compare to another, it is only the first stage of it : and it happens the first stage of tying the
Estar knot to be identical to the first stage of tying the
Bull Clove hitch. But the final move, where the spar takes its place in the knot, separates the men from the boys !

You could well had rotated the one or both wraps one less or one more 180 degree turn / one more time, the one clockwise and the other counter-clockwise, and form any of the four variations described by dan Lehman in Reply#15 ( and then some...), and only afterwards penetrate them with the spar. Would this mean that all those "knots" would be identical, "until" then ?
That is what I meant in my comment : I was replying to your question : "
Is the knot either the one or the other hitch until the moment when..." There is no knot until this moment, at least there is no finished knot. The comment you cite now is 100% right, of course.
Yes, but ....the hitch(es) in question work(s) with both the orientations of the wraps
So what ? Are they the same knot, because they both work ? ? ?

What you have tied "
in-the-hand" is only the first stage of a knot, which happens to be identical for both knots, it is not the finished knot. The finished knot requires the presence of the spar, and it requires a particular position of the spar within it. The fact that the spar can penetrate the unfinished "knot" in more than one ways ( it could had been the case that it could penetrate it in more than two ways ! ), and yet the TWO knots that are tied by those ways, both work, is not a proof of their identity ! It happens many times, the final tuck on a not-yet-finished knot, to generate two or more knots that work - but this does not mean that they were the same knot, until this final tuck ! The insertion of the spar within the two wraps is equivalent to one ( at least ) tuck, so we just can not compare unfinished knots = half tied knots, and tell if they are identical or not.
Still remains the problem that the Clove hitch/deus ex machina appears at the last moment ...
Our situation is improved - because now we can watch the formation of the
Clove hitch out of / on top of the two "parallel" loops around the "neck" of the hitch. One should tie the
Clove hitch somehow, and the way it is tied in this sequence of moves is simple, easy and conceptually much more clear than when we start from the slipped overhand knot, IMHO.