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My wife and I have gone a bit bird-crazy over the last couple of years or so. We both started out with a purely photographic interest, but now I'd probably describe each of us as 50% birder and 50% photographer. Our identification skills have vastly improved, although we have a lot to work on with shorebirds and songbirds. One thing we noticed after meeting more and more birders is that there seems to be a real dislike between birders and photographers. We've seen some pretty atrocious behaviour from both groups of people in regards to the treatment of birds, but we get some crazy attitude directed at us from the birders when we're out in a popular birding spot with our photography gear, and I haven't really heard of the reverse happening. Is it just in our head or is there a strong anti-photographer sentiment among the "pure" birders?
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Sep 2, 2013 15:29
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:28 |
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Then there's baiting. Photographers loooooove baiting Great Gray Owls. If you google an image of a great gray and see all of those awesome flight shots of the owl coming straight at the camera, I can virtually guarantee they were baited. It's a lovely thing to do because it acclimates the owls to people and they can and have attacked humans. They will also follow humans into roadways where they can get hit by cars. It is also possible to spread disease from domestically raised mice to the owls. Here's some video of fucknecks baiting: BeastOfExmoor posted:I will say that InternetJunky has shot tons of amazing Great Gray Owl shots and I don't believe he baits. He can explain for certain, but I think he just sets up in a blind and watches the owls hunt. I don't bait, but lots of people think I do thanks to the swarms of others that do bait.  I posted this picture online and got a stream of poo poo from people accusing me of baiting  The truth is my wife and I spent hundreds of hours sitting in ditches up to our shoulders in snow in -30 temps last winter, all to watch and photograph great grays. I know photographers can be real assholes, but the truth is photography is probably the best way birders are going to get more people to care. I got into birding through photography and can't be the only one. Now I'm enough of a fanatic that I drive thousands of kilometres all over the place to find new birds (this weekend it's 700km to find what is essentially a darker sea gull). [edit] On the flip side 
InternetJunky fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Sep 5, 2013 |
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Sep 5, 2013 04:31
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Me and a buddy tried tracking down some grays in Oregon last winter and didn't even see them, let alone get any photos. Totally cross country skied in and then sat in the snow for two days for nothing. Such a bummer. Gonna try again this winter but in a place where the owls are known to be habitually seen.
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Sep 5, 2013 21:07
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Had an amazing weekend birding, finding 12 lifers including this super rare (for Alberta) Parasitic Jaeger. On the way down to try and find the Jaeger we came across a Peregrine Falcon with a freshly-killed pigeon. We parked our car very far back, but he was not happy to be interrupted and flew a circle around us coming a bit too close to the highway for my comfort, so we got the hell out of there. His fly-by did net us a nice picture though: 
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Sep 9, 2013 15:33
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BeastOfExmoor posted:I hate to say it, but is that photo supposed to be of the Jaeger? Looks like a 100% match for a juvenile Ring-Billed Gull to me. I spent a morning in a thunderstorm looking for Jaegers last week. I finally gave up when the thunder stopped sounding like distant rumbling and instead sounded like the crack of a gunshot. Probably not a good time to be carrying a big tripod.  The bird was about 1.5 times the size of any of the other gulls in the area. My ID is based on other people's posts about the same bird, so I hope they got it right. I'm hardly an expert on the subject!
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Sep 9, 2013 18:09
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El Perkele posted:It's a gull, in Europe I would say Herring sp. Jaegers show large white patches on the underside of primaries and pale shafts on the uppersides; also the upperside coloration is different.
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Sep 9, 2013 20:40
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The warblers are apparently migrating through my area right now. Currently the only one I have ever seen is the yellow warbler so I have a long list of ones I'd like to see. What's the best way to observe them? Should I park my butt in front of a tree and hope for the best? I find small birds like these almost impossible to notice if I'm moving around.
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Sep 11, 2013 17:39
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I really need a comprehensive bird guide that shows pictures for all the different plumages a bird can have, my field guides are useless with all the winter & juvenile plumage I'm seeing now. I would love confirmation on some IDs: American Golden-Plover (junvenile)?   Pectoral Sandpiper (the bill colour doesn't seem to match)?  Semi-Palmated Plover (juvenile)?  Mystery Gull that stood out as very black amongst a group of much lighter Bonaparte's Gulls 
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Sep 15, 2013 15:41
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Those pics are great! I have The Shorebird Guide, which was linked earlier I think and is really pretty excellent. Shorebirds of North America, Europe, and Asia is also very good, but might be a bit too broad since it covers just about the entire world. For the gulls, Gulls of the Americas is the best I've found with tons of examples of plumage variations and comparisons between the species, hybrids, the different age groups and such. Gulls and shorebirds are really challenging!
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Sep 15, 2013 21:59
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Which sparrow guide did you order, InternetJunky? Was it this one? A friend of mine has it and it seems pretty solid. I should probably get that one as well. So the Shorebird Guide still doesn't really clear up if I got a shot of a black-bellied plover or an american golden-plover. I've had 4 veteran birdwatchers respond to my inquiry in a local mailing list -- 2 saying it's a black-bellied and another 2 saying golden. The biggest defining characteristic seems to be the 4 primary feathers extending beyond the tertials on the golden, and none of my shots clearly show that area. Too bad too since the golden plover is much rarer than the black-bellied around here so I'd love to know conclusively one way or the other.
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Sep 16, 2013 14:57
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Pablo Bluth posted:The state of birds of prey in the north of England is all rather depressing It's not like the situation is much better in North America though. I found a long-eared owl that had been shot this spring, one of the red-tail hawks I helped band had missing tail feathers from a shot gun blast, and I know of several people who brag about shooting hawks/owls.
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Sep 18, 2013 21:17
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BeastOfExmoor posted:This one is driving me insane because I saw it's identical twin with a group of Black Bellied Plovers on Friday, but I forgot my field guide in the car and didn't bring my camera because getting to where I was going required walking through submerged logs in the dark with a flashlight and dunking $1500 worth of camera gear in salt water was not something I wanted to risk. Of course I made notes of every little detail other than the primary projection. I still think your bird is a Golden. quote:is a black-bellied plover P squatarola. The bill size & structure alone rule out pacific or any other golden plover. Also the coloration in general would be exceptionally light gray for any golden-plover species, plus the dark spots on head are not "sufficiently" dark.. On the topic of bird IDs however, I'm still struggling with sparrow-sized birds. I picked up "Sparrows of the United States and Canada" hoping it would help with ID, but it's really quite useless to be honest. Short of flipping through 300 pages hoping to see a picture of something similar there's no easy way to get an ID with it. Here's a couple from yesterday I would love some help with: Female Chestnut-collard Longspur seems to match the closest but I'm a bit out of it's range according to the guidebook.  No clue for this one  I'm in Edmonton, Alberta and these were taken about 1 hour to the south-east.
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Sep 23, 2013 17:23
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BetterLekNextTime posted:Vesper sparrow? BeastOfExmoor posted:Damnit. You have me rethinking my ID again. On that subject, why do the guides have to be so useless in the way they present their information? That sparrow guide has lots of nice pictures, but flipping through 300 pages hoping to find a match isn't a great help.
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Sep 24, 2013 17:18
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Is there any chance my wife and I saw a yellow-billed magpie in Edmonton, Alberta? We were driving yesterday and at a stop light we were both watching a magpie picking through the leaves. Initially we both thought he had a french fry or something in his mouth, but as we got closer and passed him in the car it became clear it was his beak colour and not a fry. We both blurted out "yellow-billed magpie!" at the same time. We rushed home to grab the camera but couldn't find him again. I checked eBird and they seem pretty constrained to California.
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Oct 15, 2013 04:39
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Speaking of Christmas birds, is this a snow bunting? (2 hours north of Edmonton, Alberta)
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Oct 20, 2013 06:30
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Knockknees posted:Is a Christmas Bird Count something a beginner can be involved in, or would someone who didn't know what they were looking at just get in the way. I'm not totally clear on how CBCs actually even work.
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Oct 20, 2013 16:11
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I don't think I ever posted a link to my Gannet and Puffin shots from my summer trip to Newfoundland. If you're a birder this needs to be a bucket list trip, and if you're not a birder you'll leave as one. Here's a link to a gallery of 50 shots from the trip (warning, some graphic images showing gull-on-Puffin violence): http://colquhoun.smugmug.com/Newfoundland
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Oct 27, 2013 20:47
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hey santa baby posted:This guy got my hopes up that he may not be a red-tailed hawk since I can't make out a red tail, or the typical chest band. Looking at the books though, he's big, but he lacks the "mask" of a peregrine. Also, the solid patch on his chest does say red-tail to me. Is this just a juvenile red-tail after all?
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Nov 13, 2013 15:13
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I'm doing the Edmonton, Alberta CBC on Sunday. I just hope the weather improves a bit -- there's all sorts of reports of birds dying from the cold right now (including a poor barn owl that made its way up here ). I went out on Saturday to find some owls and it was below -40 not counting wind chill (which probably brought it to -60).
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Dec 10, 2013 19:02
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Speaking of bird crimes, I was about to head a few hours south tomorrow to get a look at a short-eared owl that was hanging around in the same area for a few weeks now but someone posted a picture of a rough-legged hawk killing the owl this morning. Does anyone know how common this type of behaviour is in roughies? There is a huge number of them in Alberta right now (compared to last year when I saw none) and I wonder if that's why I'm not seeing any Great Grays so far.
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Dec 13, 2013 18:48
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2013 was the first year I was serious about birding and ebird reporting, and I ended up at 152 species. I imagine I'd be somewhere around 250 species if I actually could tell the difference between all the gulls, shorebirds, and tiny birds. The modest goal for 2014 is 200 species within Alberta. It sucks having to wait months before anything shows up though. Here's the last new species reported for me for 2013: Short-eared Owl 
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Jan 1, 2014 17:30
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Assuming budget wasn't a big issue, if you had to get a birding scope that would also working well when digiscoping, what would you pick?
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Jan 3, 2014 19:09
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BeastOfExmoor posted:Zeiss Photoscope is possibly the answer if you actually meant budget wasn't a big issue.
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Jan 3, 2014 23:48
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El Perkele posted:If the above-mentioned Zeiss seems too steep, then Swarovski ATX 30-70/90x is the next tier. Behind that are the new Zeiss Diascopes and Kowas - which are great scopes, although even their prices have more than enough air. Nowhere near Swaro, though! I've been researching the Swarovski ATX a lot these past couple of days and that will probably be my choice. I spend so much time observing owls, and much of that time is when they are beyond the reach of my camera gear. Being able to record video/photographs of their behaviour even when they are further away is going to be a huge value to me.
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Jan 5, 2014 17:53
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ExecuDork posted:Does anyone have any strong opinions one way or the other regarding bird feeding?
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Jan 6, 2014 01:23
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Knockknees posted:What is the best book for helping me differentiate raptors in the Midwest (eg. OH, IN, IL, WI). I'm still a beginner, but I love love love detail, especially tips like where its wings come in relation to its tail when perching, behavior, wing flapping, silhouettes, and all that jazz. I spent a lot of time this past summer driving around banding hawks with one of the book's authors (William Clark) and can safely say the guy is currently forgetting more about raptors every day than I will probably learn in a lifetime.
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Jan 11, 2014 05:31
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I went birding at a power station cooling pond yesterday. It's a great location because the waters don't freeze so thousands of waterfowl overwinter there. I even saw a bird that triggered a rare bird alert (Ring-necked Duck) which was a first for me. Just curious about these guys though:  They were quite far out so this is a heavy crop. Is it an American Wigeon?
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Jan 18, 2014 16:36
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BeastOfExmoor posted:Looks like a Gadwall to me. I always think they're female Wigeon at first because the head shape is so similar.
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Jan 18, 2014 20:09
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ExecuDork posted:Which guide are you using? When I first put up my feeders it took forever for something to come. It's been too warm here lately which keeps the birds away too. On an unrelated note, I just got back from a day trip owling in a new area. It was too warm for owls although I did see a couple of great grays for a few minutes. The real treat was dealing with the local rear end in a top hat who really didn't like me driving around his farm. He pulled up beside me while I was pulled over looking through my binoculars and just started right in with "what the hell are you doing here" and "I've already reported your license to the police". I was on public roads and never once stepped foot over a fence, so this behaviour certainly surprised me. After a brief conversation trying to explain that I was birding I drove off and went down what turned out to be a dead end road, and he followed me down there and blocked my exit. He laid into me again saying this time I was on his land (it was still a public range road) and it took me a while to get him to calm down. Not a great situations and not something I care to repeat.
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Jan 20, 2014 04:11
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BeastOfExmoor posted:My rule of thumb is always try to calm people down by trying to be the coolest person ever. I'm basically doing the least invasive thing ever so I just try to act like it. All my other experiences with grumpy farmer types has always turned completely positive by the end. I spend a lot of time in farm ditches photographing owls, and lots of farmers will come out very hostile at first and once they see what I'm doing they immediately change their demeanour and usually even offer me access to their property if I want. I'm tempted to report his farm as a birding hotspot for great gray owls on ebird. 
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Jan 20, 2014 15:57
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Any chance an ID is possible from this picture? Taken in Jasper, Alberta I suspect Scaup but I don't know if it's possible to tell Lesser from Greater.
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Mar 2, 2014 22:53
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What a horrible birding winter. Almost no owls and not much else either. Now that the birds are migrating back it's awesome to get out there and see some variety again! On that subject, I found a mixed group of ducks yesterday in a flooded farmer's field. Green-wing Teals, Northern Pintails (lifer), Mallards, Northern Shovellers, possible Cinnamon Teal, and this mystery on the right:  That's a Northern Pintail beside it for reference. Any ideas what it is? This is in Alberta, Canada.
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Apr 14, 2014 15:00
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:28 |
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Couple of ID requests. These are all from central Alberta, Canada: I believe this to be a Hudsonian Godwit, since he was standing beside a Marbled Godwit and the two looked completely different, and nothing else seems to match around here.  Is there a way to tell a juvi California Gull from a juvi Herring Gull? I thought the black beak was the deciding feature but then I found a picture of a black-beaked juvi California Gull in my Gull guide (Peterson's). I hate juvi bird IDs. 
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Aug 6, 2014 16:12
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