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Is there a good resource for IDing a bird by its call on mobile? I keep hearing one across the way that I can't see and its bugging me that I can't figure out what it is. I already know its probably just going to be some sort of pigeon or owl, but my brain needs to know.
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May 2, 2020 21:35
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lord funk posted:Saw Snow Buntings for the first time! oh my god they're perfect
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May 2, 2020 21:55
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XeeD posted:Is there a good resource for IDing a bird by its call on mobile? I keep hearing one across the way that I can't see and its bugging me that I can't figure out what it is. I already know its probably just going to be some sort of pigeon or owl, but my brain needs to know. People have built apps that try to do this, but I don't think it's at the point where it's reliable at all. The best thing to do is make and audio recording with your phone, either by using a note app or by just recording a video, and post it somewhere where people who can ID birds by sound can listen to it.
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May 2, 2020 22:14
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XeeD posted:Is there a good resource for IDing a bird by its call on mobile? I keep hearing one across the way that I can't see and its bugging me that I can't figure out what it is. I already know its probably just going to be some sort of pigeon or owl, but my brain needs to know. If you are in North America, let us know roughly where you are, as much description of the sound as you can remember (like how many notes, were they all the same length? Same pitch?. etc) and when during the day/night you are hearing it, and we can try to stick a name on it. Worst case, we can give you a list of the owls and doves in your area and you can look up their sounds online and see what matches best.
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May 3, 2020 00:47
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BetterLekNextTime posted:If you are in North America, let us know roughly where you are, as much description of the sound as you can remember (like how many notes, were they all the same length? Same pitch?. etc) and when during the day/night you are hearing it, and we can try to stick a name on it. Worst case, we can give you a list of the owls and doves in your area and you can look up their sounds online and see what matches best. I'm in north central Saskatchewan, and its always three even "whoooo" calls about a second long, usually in the middle of the afternoon. Low and quiet like a pigeon/dove cooing, but without the warble they usually have. Or the first half of a loon call. Honestly, it sounds like blowing across the top of a mostly full beer bottle. Man, you'd think something this simple would be way easier to actually put into words.
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May 3, 2020 04:37
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This is the dumb/obvious suggestion, but could it be a Mourning Dove?
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May 3, 2020 05:22
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I'd look at Great Horned Owl and Eurasian Collared Dove too.
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May 3, 2020 05:44
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YggiDee posted:This is the dumb/obvious suggestion, but could it be a Mourning Dove? From what I can hear on youtube, this is really close, but there's no rise in pitch, its just three even tones.
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May 4, 2020 19:14
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BetterLekNextTime posted:I'd look at Great Horned Owl and Eurasian Collared Dove too. Yea, Eurasian-Collared Dove is what came to my mind if Mourning Dove is ruled out. Not sure if they're really made it quite to where XeeD lives though. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eurasian_Collared-Dove/sounds
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May 5, 2020 00:51
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Collared doves are expanding northward pretty rapidly, so it doesn't seem impossible, but yeah, even looking at the "sightings" tab on the all about birds page seems like it would be unusual there (for now). Maybe regular pigeon (i.e. Rock Dove) or an escaped pet dove or something?
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May 5, 2020 01:47
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Attracted an unexpected guest after an easy meal:  It was carefully digging through the brick trying to pick out something specific. Sunflower seeds maybe?
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May 10, 2020 18:19
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Fabulousity posted:Attracted an unexpected guest after an easy meal: What's up Pileated buddy! I have been walking the same park for two weeks trying to get my first shot of one, and just yesterday I finally got it: 
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May 11, 2020 00:16
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Great photos. I really need a zoom lens. A couple of Mississippi kites have been circling over my house lately. It's cool watching them dart around and eat bugs midflight.
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May 11, 2020 00:24
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A handful of Robins have been coming to our bird baths to drink. Neat to see them hang out, even if they don't eat birdseed. Had to take our bird feeders down a few months ago and I've just been throwing a couple handfuls of seed in our planters and honestly I think the birds like it even better!
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May 11, 2020 00:31
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Yeah I got fed up refilling my feeder every time a squirrel dumped it out, so I set out a flat log and poured seed in it, and tbh it was really cool.
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May 11, 2020 00:37
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Fabulousity posted:Attracted an unexpected guest after an easy meal: Not sure if it would be going for seeds or going for the suet between the seeds? Dang I'm jealous though. They're pretty hard to run into where I am. I did get to watch acorn woodpeckers and also a pair of downys feeding a nest today. And yesterday I found a bushtit nest in the process of fledging that I must have walked past 20 times in the past month.
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May 11, 2020 02:33
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Great photos. I really need a zoom lens. 
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May 11, 2020 03:25
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I was working on my electric goat fence and I startled a robin off her nest. She made it right next to the fence charger so hopefully that will keep the local feral cats away. I moved that red wire so it won’t be in her way anymore.
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May 11, 2020 12:37
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I need help identifying a bird I saw on my lunch-time walk around campus and down to the lake with boardwalk. I don't have a photo, just a description. It looked like a duck in body shape, and it was mainly dark brown - not streaky or mottled like a female mallard, but a seemingly uniform dark brown, maybe a patch of lighter brown. Black eyes, and there was a buff-colored eyepatch, teardrop shaped with the round end around the eye and the tail towards the back of the head. It was seated on a mostly submerged branch and in the shade, and I declined to get too close to it, so that's the best description I have. I'm in central Florida for reference.
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May 15, 2020 17:41
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Bufflehead?
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May 15, 2020 17:59
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Bufflehead? One in Florida would be extraordinarily rare (bird guides put Florida straight up outside their range), and the eyepatch on the bird I saw was around the eye itself, not under it. Edit: Think I found it. Pretty sure what I saw was a female wood duck. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 18:05 on May 15, 2020 |
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May 15, 2020 18:01
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Yeah, it was definitely a female wood duck. It's getting uncomfortably hot out for my normal lunch-time walks at work down to the lake and back, but it's been a good time for seeing baby birds. For the past week or so I've been seeing several wood and mallard duck hens with broods of ducklings in tow, common gallinules with their chicks, juvenile red-winged blackbirds and boat-tailed grackles, and in the last few days, a couple of juvenile green herons following one of their parents around. Also saw a northern flicker on my walk today, only my second time seeing one here in Florida.
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May 21, 2020 17:53
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Yeah I was excited to catch a picture of a loon with a baby, but now that the weather is nice all the boaters are out on Lake Superior. I don't really see any water fowl anymore, and I think it's because the boats scare them away 
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May 23, 2020 19:38
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Don't mess with loons ya'll  quote:And in a contest between the bald eagle, America's national bird, and a common loon, which is featured on Canada's dollar coin, few would bet on the latter to come out the victor.
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May 23, 2020 20:12
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I witnessed something unusual yesterday. I was sitting in my parents' backyard in the evening, about 30 feet away from a nest box where a pair of house sparrows had set up shop. It's partially covered by a bush for cover. I kept an eye on the box, but never noticed a parent present. After about an hour, I saw a rare visitor -- a blue jay. They are active in that neighborhood and can be heard calling, but almost never appear on my parents' property. It perched on a nearby black walnut tree, fluttered down to that bush, and made a beeline for the nest box. One quick pluck and it pulled out a nestling and flew away. I had to console my parents. Even though the house sparrow is invasive in this region, and the rate of survival for baby birds is low, they were quite fond of the babies and it was hard for them to see it happen. I wouldn't be surprised if that blue jay or another predator returned for seconds, either. I wonder where the parents were during this? (I know that parents on the nest will sometimes abandon them if they see a predator twice their size approaching, so having a parent present doesn't always protect the nest.)
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May 26, 2020 03:32
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I had to chase off an Eastern Gray Squirrel (invasive here on the west coast) from the Steller's Jay nest under my deck this morning. The general population would be really horrified if they knew how many cute baby animals are killed by other cute animals in their backyards every year.
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May 26, 2020 19:27
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Mizuti posted:...BLUE JAY WINS... One of those things that separates "animal lover" from "naturalist." It can be really hard for some people to enjoy the entirety of the circle of life. For what it's worth, Blue Jay populations have been way down in some places so this is a good thing, especially given the non-native prey. If the nestlings are old enough to be crawling close to the nest hole, they may need a ton of food right now and be able to thermoregulate on their own quite well. Both parents may be scrambling to get enough food for the brood, so might not be on hand to defend the nest box. I don't know much about the details of blue jay behavior but they might be tactical enough to make their move when the parents are both gone.
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May 26, 2020 19:44
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BetterLekNextTime posted:I don't know much about the details of blue jay behavior but they might be tactical enough to make their move when the parents are both gone. They're corvids, so they're definitely intelligent enough for that. The jay may very well have marked down the location of the nest in memory, noticed the parents were gone when passing by, and grabbed dinner. My favorite online bird guide notes that going for nestlings and eggs is a known, if rare, behavior for blue jays.
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May 26, 2020 20:42
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BetterLekNextTime posted:One of those things that separates "animal lover" from "naturalist." It can be really hard for some people to enjoy the entirety of the circle of life. For what it's worth, Blue Jay populations have been way down in some places so this is a good thing, especially given the non-native prey. Nature, red in tooth and claw. It's very hard for many people to cope with the reality baby animals face. Well, at least this one helped a declining species. What I could see of the unfortunate nestling looked very pink and immature, so I doubt it was able to thermoregulate yet.
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May 28, 2020 02:35
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I saw bird on baby bird violence during my lunch break today. Common gallinule walking on the lake shore with a couple chicks in tow, they walked too close to a great blue heron. Heron took two steps over, shot out its neck, grabbed one of the chicks, and down the hatch, all in the span of a second or two.
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May 29, 2020 21:49
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Next week is Black Birders Week! Passing this along in case this applies to anyone here or anyone you know... https://twitter.com/n8ture_al/status/1266346082843471873/photo/1 This thread hasn't drifted too far into conservation/politics/feral cat rants and that's probably a good thing, but I figured on the heels of the Central Park incident I could indulge. Remember to be allies of other birders and not just the birds. I just read an essay by an African American wildlife biologist who literally had to find a new graduate project because there were too many white supremacists in the area he was planning to work.
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May 29, 2020 23:31
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I've started keeping a daily record of the birds I see on my usual lunchtime walk, down to a wooded lake and out on the boardwalk. Every Day Red-Winged Blackbird Common Grackle Boat-Tailed Grackle Muscovy Duck Common Gallinule Great Blue Heron Tricolor Heron Most Days Green Heron Purple Gallinule Mallard Duck Little Blue Heron Some Days Wood Duck American Coot Anhinga Rarely Limpkin Least Bittern Northern Flicker My favorites are the Common Gallinules, the good old marsh chickens. They make the oddest noises, and have been the source of many frustrations and I look around for the source of some noise I don't recognize, only for a gallinule to walk out of some reeds making weird noises as it goes.
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Jun 2, 2020 17:36
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I love me some least bittern. That's pretty rad. Yeah, coots and gallinules are pretty entertaining being bastards to each other. My best local birds right now are great-horned owl nest that's still got fluffy babies in it. Not awesome for photography but it's right in the parking lot of the regional park near my house so they are pretty chill with people.
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Jun 2, 2020 23:20
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That great blue heron that nommed the gallinule chick the other day (pretty sure it's the same heron, going by his breeding plumage) got a baby gator today while I was out walking.  The gator was probably six to eight inches long, clearly just out of the nest, but still. I will never underestimate how hard a great blue can spear something with its beak again.BetterLekNextTime posted:I love me some least bittern. That's pretty rad. I've seen both an adult and a juvenile so I'm pretty sure there's a family nesting in the area, but they're elusive birds at the best of times.
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Jun 3, 2020 17:39
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Any idea what these nightmarish sounds might be coming from? I honestly don't have the first idea. Sometimes they sounded almost duck-like so I thought they might be waterfowl? They've been doing this for like 15 minutes back and forth non-stop and at first I thought I might be overhearing a murder but then they just. kept. doing. this.  https://i.imgur.com/lLm5JEC.mp4 Edit: Sorry I got distracted by trying to figure out how to embed the mp4 and forgot to add any context: I live in Austin TX near a small usually-dry creek and some wide open nature space with always-running creeks. And there's wild guinea fowl in the neighborhood that seem like they might be able to make this sound, but I haven't heard them do it before. Corla Plankun fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jun 6, 2020 |
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Jun 6, 2020 06:13
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My best guess is a Snowy Egret or a Little Blue Heron. The creeks sound like good habitat for these small birds, and while they're usually very quiet, it is nesting season which means they're going to be noisy.
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Jun 6, 2020 13:09
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Corla Plankun posted:Any idea what these nightmarish sounds might be coming from? I honestly don't have the first idea. Sometimes they sounded almost duck-like so I thought they might be waterfowl? They've been doing this for like 15 minutes back and forth non-stop and at first I thought I might be overhearing a murder but then they just. kept. doing. this. I think it's mammal, not bird. I think maybe raccoons, they make a hell of a noise when they fight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUegs-QPNSo Might be possum too. Don't think it's bobcat because they make cat noises in addition to horror monster screams.
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Jun 6, 2020 14:40
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I'm pretty sure it wasn't a mammal because the sounds never got into like the "EE" or "errrr" noises that mammals make. Though I've never seen them in my neighborhood, I think "Little Blue Heron" is correct. The first audio sample on all about birds matches the sound and also the regular cadence they were doing. Thank you for the identification help! I've seen Yellow Crowned Night Herons around here a few times so it wouldn't be too surprising for there to be Little Blue Herons too. Neat!
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Jun 6, 2020 16:56
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Spent yesterday skulking around the Hood Canal area of Puget Sound and came away surprised at how lousy the whole place is with Bald Eagles. If you can't see them you can hear them. That said I didn't get a lot of usable photos because my camera/lens was throwing focus like a drunken MLB pitcher if I aimed at anything avian that didn't have pure sky behind it. Some kind of Swallow? It had a split tail.  Some kind of sparrow singing happy pudgy songs near me while I was waiting for eagles.  No idea what this was and it flew away before I could get closer.  Bald eagles being dicks to each other while a Blue Heron quietly passes by.  Bald eagle.  Seagull eating a scallop I think?  Another Seagull carrying away a... thing. Not really sure what that is. A giant snail?
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Jun 12, 2020 00:13
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Fabulousity posted:Spent yesterday skulking around the Hood Canal area of Puget Sound and came away surprised at how lousy the whole place is with Bald Eagles. If you can't see them you can hear them. That said I didn't get a lot of usable photos because my camera/lens was throwing focus like a drunken MLB pitcher if I aimed at anything avian that didn't have pure sky behind it.
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Jun 12, 2020 00:26
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