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It's that sad time of year again. Where the warblers are just about gone and the only ones left are yellow-rumps by the dozen and palms, and a few yellowthroats. It's not gonna be till april when warbler movements are seen again through the area. And it makes me sad  . I hope we have a better spring migration this year. Last year it didn't really even get in full swing until the 8th of May.
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Oct 22, 2013 15:04
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I pulled up eBird records to point out all the great winter birds you get out there, but it is pretty meager. I can at least look forward to watching multiple Short-Eared Owls hunting in broad daylight if I drive to the right place. The fact that the Football Funhouse had 20 times as many birding related posts today as this thread did is pretty funny.
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Oct 23, 2013 02:55
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BeastOfExmoor posted:I pulled up eBird records to point out all the great winter birds you get out there, but it is pretty meager. I can at least look forward to watching multiple Short-Eared Owls hunting in broad daylight if I drive to the right place. Oh I know we can get some great winter birds. Loch Raven Reservoir had a Eurasian Wigeon last year and there's some other great places like Swan Harbor Farm Park not too far away. I also like Marshy Point for waterbowl. Swan Creek down past the Key Bridge can be a good spot too but it's only open on weekdays. I've been there once and it's nice but some stuff is tough to see. But a lot of it is just "dark-eyed Junco", "White-throated sparrow", "Song Sparrow" over and over again. There are Fox Sparrows though which are great. And Swan Harbor is a fantastic spot for American Tree Sparrow. I haven't seen SE Owls but I do plan on driving to see them this year on Bullfrog road. Last winter was so amazing with the big finch irruption. Every winter after that one will seem sub-par. It was so exciting never knowing when you might run into a Crossbill flock. I even hit it big when I chased Common Redpolls. Wow!! I never thought I'd see those here in MD.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:09
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If you like Harriers you'll love Short-Eared Owls. Similar hunting style But even more elegant. Last year was great for finches here as well. I stepped out on my parents back porch on Christmas morning and there were three Common Redpolls mixed in a flock of Pine Siskins. Eurasian Wigeons are much more common here as well. My parents have a couple that have wintered in their subdivision every year.
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Oct 23, 2013 05:19
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Yeah that's a reason I want to see those owls. And I love owls. Harriers are also cool because they have owl faces. Probably no winter in our lifetimes will ever be as good as last winter. And that makes me sad. But at least I got to experience it. Northern Shoveler is my favorite duck. They're not hard to find in the winter but I love those goofy bastards. Very pretty too.
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Oct 23, 2013 13:20
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Earlier this week I went to RSPB Snettisham. It overlooks The Wash estuary and is famous because high tides forces the wintering waders in to massive flocks. Spring tides complete cover the mudflats and forces them all in to the air. The sound of >30 thousand waders taking off in unison is remarkable. Visually, it also rather cool, with the murmuration* suddenly switching from black to white to black as the waders change direction (a lot of the wader species being dark on top than underwing). This might not work outside the UK, and the video compression ruins the spectacle, but: http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/s/snettisham/video.aspx The footage of the distance flock as a weaving, amorphous blob are taken looking out over The Wash. The close-up of the shuffling knots are where lots of the birds take refuse in the RSPB maintained gravel-pit, waiting for high-tide to reverse. Unfortunately the day I was there was apparently an appearance of a peregrine which flushed a lot of the birds in the other direction. Anyone else been, or have something similar in your corner of the world? * technically Murmuration is the collective noun for flocked starling, but I'm not sure if there is a formal one for a mixed flock of waders. Pablo Bluth fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Oct 25, 2013 |
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Oct 25, 2013 19:34
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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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InternetJunky posted: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. Thanks- those are fantastic. I know you posted some of those earlier- those puffin shots are something else- what a hard life. The gannets are great- I've seen plenty of them during the winter along the east coast but never seen their courtship displays.
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Oct 28, 2013 18:24
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The documentary nonprofit I mentioned earlier is starting to come together, and we've taken the wraps off our first major project, a bird-centric feature about the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary: https://vimeo.com/78197694 As part of this project, we're trying to reach out to other bird and wildlife enthusiasts and share their experiences with wetlands restoration projects and wildlife-friendly sustainable infrastructure projects on the West coast*. If there's a place like that you'd like to see us cover, feel free to PM me or drop me a line at info "at" redwoodplanet "dot" org. *I'd love to cover things outside our region too, but we're trying to keep budgets as small as possible while we get off the ground.
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Nov 5, 2013 00:11
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Are any of you birders good at IDs without photos? I spotted a group of three birds while hiking this weekend. I was on the summit of Mt. Moosilauke in New Hampshire at an elevation of ~4800'. I didn't have my 70-300mm because I didn't want the extra weight while hiking. The birds were flushed by another hiker approaching the summit. They seemed to be approximately sparrow sized and shaped. When they first took flight I got a decent look at their undersides, which seemed mostly white, though this was at a distance, so I couldn't make out fine details. I was able to see them in flight from above, as they flew across the shoulder of the mountain. From above they were largely white, with bold black wing tips, and what appeared to be light brown on the back, either streaking or a patch. I don't remember the markings on the tail. I'm guessing these are Snow Buntings, but if there are other birds that fit this description, I won't put them on my list. EPICAC fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 22:53
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The first thing that came to my mind before I even saw you guess Snow Bunting was Snow Bunting. But honestly there's no way to know for sure. The time of year and range seems correct for Snow Bunting.
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Nov 5, 2013 23:21
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razz posted:The first thing that came to my mind before I even saw you guess Snow Bunting was Snow Bunting. But honestly there's no way to know for sure. The time of year and range seems correct for Snow Bunting. Same here. The only other small, mostly white birds I can think of would be shorebirds.
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Nov 6, 2013 01:00
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I'd agree with Snow Bunting, with an outside chance of Gray Jay or maybe Horned Lark or Lapland Longspur...
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Nov 6, 2013 01:05
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Snow Buntings look like sparrows re-painted black & white in breeding colours, with a little brown during the winter season. I'm willing to bet you were indeed looking at Snow Buntings.
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Nov 6, 2013 01:06
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Thanks everyone. I think I'm fairly confident in the ID. They definitely weren't Gray Jays, and Horned Lark and Lapland Longspur don't have enough white on the back or the black wing tips.
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Nov 6, 2013 16:17
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New CLO binocular ratings just came out. They include a Price/Quality comparison that might be helpful to get a sense of how much your extra dollars are likely to get you. Feeling good about my Conquests  Nikon, Celestron, and Eagle Optics still look like great values. e: unrelated, I've been doing weekly lunch bird walks at my campus. The first few were poorly attended due to extreme winds and hot weather, but we've had great conditions over the past month, and between 6 and 8 people for the past few weeks. A definite mix of people and experience levels- it's been pretty fun. Some undergraduates up through retired folks, some hot-shot ornithology grad students to a foreign postdoc who's getting lifers every time we go out. Got a few locally decent birds today- including Raven, Purple Finch, and Townsend's Warbler. Weirdest thing was a little ~ 1-2 week old duckling! BetterLekNextTime fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 7, 2013 07:23
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So, I just heard a great bird commotion from my home office and naturally grabbed my camera that is not set up for shootin' birds. As a result, the photos aren't quite perfect. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mxdv/sets/72157637446053086/with/10742950515/ I *think* that these were just grackles doing whatever it is grackles do, but I noticed some speckled birds in there too that I'm not familiar with. Are they female/juvenile grackles? Birds that the grackles were messing with? Are there any grackles in there at all? I don't know much.
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Nov 8, 2013 16:24
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Insanite posted:So, I just heard a great bird commotion from my home office and naturally grabbed my camera that is not set up for shootin' birds. As a result, the photos aren't quite perfect. Looks like Common Grackles and European Starlings, from what I can tell. The Starlings are the speckled birds. I wouldn't be shocked if there was another species mixed in since blackbirds tend to mix together we these species as well, but I don't see any in the photos. Starlings can make crazy noises and are masters of mimicry. Grackles aren't exactly silent either.
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Nov 8, 2013 17:41
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Yeah, I briefly thought starlings after looking around a bit, but I have no confidence in my bird IDing abilities. Thanks!
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Nov 8, 2013 20:49
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Insanite posted:Yeah, I briefly thought starlings after looking around a bit, but I have no confidence in my bird IDing abilities. Thanks! The brownish ones are juvenile Starlings. They don't get that glossy black color until they molt out of their baby plumage. I went birding around the creek and pond by our house yesterday. I went at the worst time of day (like 4:00 pm and there was a huge glare on the lake) but I did catch a pair of Belted Kingfishers, and one lone male Hooded Merganser in his nice black and white plumage. The kingfishers seem to have set up a permanent residence at the lake and I know where their favorite fishing trees are. There are a couple dead snags right at the edge of the water that one of them is usually perched on. I saw one beating up a fish last week before swallowing it. Also caught a Pileated Woodpecker rustling around in some leaves. Then he hopped up on the trunk of a large tree and I watched him spiral around it for a while, then got a good look at him when he flew off. The sun was backlighting his red crest and it looked really sweet. There were possibly two but I couldn't be sure because I never saw two at the same time. I heard one calling pretty far from where I saw the first one, but it could have been the same guy since he flew in that direction. I didn't see much else noteworthy besides one Oregon Junco (not super common in KS but it's not the first time I've seen one). And the Harris's Sparrows are here in huge numbers. Them and the Lincoln's Sparrows like to gather in the brush piles behind the house.
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Nov 8, 2013 21:02
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Send some Harris's Sparrows out this way! I'd love to find one of those out here. I wish we got more diverse sparrows around here. I like them but the problem is there are just so many of certain types and it wears you down mentally after a while. I like the distribution of species better with warblers and there are more species around in general. With sparrows there's a bunch you can see but lots are rare. And god drat if I am sifting through all those Chippers to try to find a Clay-colored. There's a big roost of grackles that is often right around here and when they come through MAN is it noisy. For some reason when it snows is when they come through. Usually mixed with some Starlings, RWBB, and Cowbirds. I always try in vain to find a Rusty Blackbird mixed in with them but never any luck. Kawalimus fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 21:28
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Must be fall. There's usually a massive herd that flies form house to house, including my parents house, going around eating all the grubs before flying south and the ground freezes?
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Nov 8, 2013 21:34
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These are from last week in San Francisco, and I'm not sure about ID. The side of his head looks like a Brewer's sparrow, but the crown is too dark and not striped enough. Also, Brewer's sparrows are supposed to be rare in SF. Every other sparrow I see in the books (Sibley, Kaufman, iBird) has more distinct markings on his cheeks. Am I just looking at the dreaded female house sparrow, or maybe a really washed-out white-throated? They were feeding under some eucalyptus tree.  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 12, 2013 04:13
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Possibly Swainson's Hawk. They're the same size and shape as a Red-Tailed (same genus), and their ranges heavily overlap - they compete for nest sites and prey in some places. Younger birds seem to often have that white-with-brown chest. If you see it strutting around nailing grasshoppers with its feet, Swainson's for sure.
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Nov 12, 2013 04:32
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I'd guess White-crowned Sparrow on the sparrows and juvie Red-tailed Hawk on the hawk (too bad you can't get a number off the leg band!) The sparrow on the right is throwing me a bit with the bright eye-line (kind of makes me think Chipping Sparrow), but as someone who lives in Northern California I'm pretty used to seeing that back pattern and wing bars.
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Nov 12, 2013 04:42
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Thanks guys. Seeing the wide variety of Swainson's Hawk plumages this may be a possibility although most of them seem to have a distinct v-shaped darker bib and this bird doesn't. Also, ebird's bar charts call overwhelming odds for RTHA, so I still have to lean that way. Thanks for the sparrows as well. It's still hard to recognize as white-crowned, but maybe it's what Sibley calls "first winter".
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Nov 12, 2013 17:06
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Did you happen to get a look at the band on its leg?
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Nov 12, 2013 18:54
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I'd go with White-Crowned Sparrow as well. My reaction was the same as BetterLekNextTime. Confusing head, but the body screamed WC to me. Winter sparrows can be rough. Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawks always throw me. They look just different enough to be something else, but not quite right for anything else. Every year I forget how miserable it is in Seattle after daylight savings time ends in the fall. Sun now rises at 7:00am sets at 4:40pm, which means there's nearly no time for birding before work or after work. Add to that the constant drizzle and it's been pretty lame birding lately. I did get signed up for two local CBC's. Going to spend 7 hours on a boat in Puget Sound on one of them. Should be interesting.
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Nov 12, 2013 19:44
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razz posted:Did you happen to get a look at the band on its leg? I have like 50 pictures of this guy, but all are too fuzzy to make out anything on his band, sadly. And I'm itching to ebird the white-crowned sparrow but I don't want to be a streaker, or whatever it's called when you just call a bird because you want it to be that. Stringer?
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Nov 12, 2013 21:30
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hey santa baby posted:I have like 50 pictures of this guy, but all are too fuzzy to make out anything on his band, sadly. For what it's worth I'm pretty certain about the left-hand sparrow. And White-crowned is super common in the bay area.
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Nov 12, 2013 22:01
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hey santa baby posted:And I'm itching to ebird the white-crowned sparrow but I don't want to be a streaker, or whatever it's called when you just call a bird because you want it to be that. Stringer? Yes, "stringer." There's a decent blog post on the term here. I live a county over from what I suspect is the best known stringer in North America. He has never seen a accipiter that isn't a Northern Goshawk. This would be bad enough, but he spends his free time going around and posting comments on such bullshit ID's.
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Nov 12, 2013 23:35
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BeastOfExmoor posted:Yes, "stringer." There's a decent blog post on the term here. I live a county over from what I suspect is the best known stringer in North America. He has never seen a accipiter that isn't a Northern Goshawk. This would be bad enough, but he spends his free time going around and posting comments on such bullshit ID's. Yeah, that's where I saw that term first. Curiously Don just yesterday had something to say about juvenile red-tailed hawks, which goes along with the hawk ID above.
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Nov 12, 2013 23:52
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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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InternetJunky posted:The easiest marking to distinguish between a Red Tail and Swainson's when the bird is perched like that is to look at where the wing tips reach. If the wing tips touch the end of the tail it's a Swainson's. (ie your bird is a red tail) Ahh the red tail. The most disappointing of hawks. "Oooh! Hawk! There! It's.... a red tail." 
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Nov 13, 2013 15:21
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lord funk posted:Ahh the red tail. The most disappointing of hawks. I had a field tech once who did a master's thesis on Red-tails, and she wouldn't let me get away with this, not even once.
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Nov 13, 2013 18:51
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InternetJunky posted:The easiest marking to distinguish between a Red Tail and Swainson's when the bird is perched like that is to look at where the wing tips reach. If the wing tips touch the end of the tail it's a Swainson's. (ie your bird is a red tail) I'm confused, the blog linked in the post before you described Red Tails as having wings which pretty much reach the end of the tail.
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Nov 13, 2013 19:40
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Knockknees posted:I'm confused, the blog linked in the post before you described Red Tails as having wings which pretty much reach the end of the tail. The distinction is probably in the "pretty much." Looking at various images of Swainson's (eg on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swainson%27s_Hawk ) their primaries project just a little bit further. Now the Swainson's hawk will probably be my nemesis bird thanks a lot jerks.
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Nov 13, 2013 20:02
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Ah, that makes sense, thanks! There's an isolated populated of only 3 or 4 breeding pairs of Swainson's nearby Illinois, the only ones East of the Mississippi. I'm really really hoping to see one this summer, but I'm such a beginner, I can't tell anything from a Red Tail.
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Nov 13, 2013 20:57
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^ It might be harder in a place that actually has multiple Buteo species that can be seen in the summer, but I haven't had any issue seperating Swainson's from Red-Tailed Hawks in the field. In flight they have longer, thinner, more pointy wings. Here's a great sneak preview of the Sibley Guide to Birds 2nd edition. I'm unreasonably excited about this. Kawalimus, I know you're bummed about all your migrants being gone, but just to put things in perspective I just added my 12th warbler to my state list here in Washington. Yes, I had to chase a rarity to find twelve species of Warblers in my home state in my lifetime. That rare warbler that I had to chase three times before I found it? A Palm Warbler.
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Nov 20, 2013 21:09
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What do you guys think this is, a Laughing Gull or a Franklin's Gull? The dark wings make me thing Laughing but the tail makes me think Franklin's. This bird was amongst one of the large groups of Franklin's that migrates through the great plains in the Fall. This picture was taken around mid-October in KS.
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Nov 20, 2013 21:35
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