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Bingo! My wife called me and told me to sneak in to the garage from the back door. Apparently it was much deeper in the garage when she noticed it, which startled her causing her to scream before realizing what it was. The bird gave 0 fucks. It wouldn't let us get right up to it but it definitely did not care about our presence within a few feet. She named him Chuck.
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Mar 23, 2021 15:48
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I had a canary on my bird feeder once in the middle of a snowstorm in rural North Carolina. Escaped pet, I would imagine.
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Mar 25, 2021 04:20
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We have been hiking a lot more and recently I started bringing my binoculars - an old pair of 10x50s - but they're too bulky to just wear around my neck and it's a pain in the rear end to keep pulling them out of a backpack. I saw the recommendations on the first page via audobon, they all seem to be for 8x42s, but I think what I'd really like is something I can tuck into a pocket. I know going smaller means sacrificing magnificaiton & light gathering. Any suggestions for something quite small and light, but still of decent quality, around $150 or less? Also here are some lovely cell phone camera birb pics.   Tentatively IDing as a cooper's hawk. Mt. Wanda, Martinez CA, Feb 3rd.   Gooses. We get shitloads of canada geese around here but these are a different flavor. Newhall Community Park, Concord CA, Jan 31st.  A white water birb of some kind. Newhall Community Park, Concord CA, Jan 31st.  A hawk in my back yard. Red shouldered or red tailed, most likely? Concord CA, Dec 25th 2020.   Hawk, probably red shouldered. Lime Ridge Open Space, Concord CA, Oct. 30 2020. Later I'll get out my actual good camera photos. I don't have a long telephoto, and I rarely bring the 150-300mm with me, so it's not an ideal setup for birding, but I have a few that are better than lovely cell pics.
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Mar 31, 2021 23:11
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Leperflesh posted:We have been hiking a lot more and recently I started bringing my binoculars - an old pair of 10x50s - but they're too bulky to just wear around my neck and it's a pain in the rear end to keep pulling them out of a backpack. I saw the recommendations on the first page via audobon, they all seem to be for 8x42s, but I think what I'd really like is something I can tuck into a pocket. I know going smaller means sacrificing magnificaiton & light gathering. Any suggestions for something quite small and light, but still of decent quality, around $150 or less? You'll be looking for Compact binoculars then, maybe check out one of these. Most of the major brands that you see in the Audubon rundown will also make some kind of compact binocular, so to some extent it's just finding something in your price range and that you like using. There aren't many bad binoculars these days once you get out of the super bargain class. quote:Also here are some lovely cell phone camera birb pics. quote:
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Mar 31, 2021 23:40
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Thanks! For that first hawk, the color is deceptive: it's backlit somewhat, so the bird's colors aren't coming through, it's just dark. I made the tentative ID based on the fan-shaped tail, and looking at it with my binoculars. But I am not a Birder Person who can identify hakws easily so I'd still defer to your ID! e. it is much more likely to be a red-tail hawk then a Ferrugineous, given it's hanging around the SF bay area rather than out in the desert, and Mt. Wanda is a known red-tail & red-shoulder hangout. Here's a couple more pics of it, I just posted the two best ones but any of these might help.  
Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Apr 1, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 23:53
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I cannot ID hawks at all. No issues with any other birds. Just hawks.
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Apr 1, 2021 00:21
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I was going in part by the darker belly. Red-shouldered would show obvious bands on the tail too. Definitely hit me up for any East Bay bird questions! Ferruginous aren't common but you can get them in the East Bay in winter, more commonly out towards Livermore. But I've gotten them even relatively close to the bay. This winter we saw one at Fernandez Ranch near Hercules and I've seen them in Wildcat Canyon near Richmond too, also once or twice out at Pt. Reyes. Usually when I see them they are super high up though.
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Apr 1, 2021 00:23
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Oh you're local, cool! I know a long-time birder, family friend, who does raptors a lot; but she's more of a friend of my parents' and I don't like to bother her too often with "what's this bird" texts lol. She did teach me to identify red-shouldered by their (loud, incessant) calls, though, so I feel pretty confident in identifying them if they vocalize. We've also been looking at lots of smaller birbs lately but those tend to be near impossible to photograph well with a cell phone. We are pretty sure we have a yellow-rumped warbler ID, we definitely heard a great horned owl around the backside of mt wanda on two different hikes, and we've seen a lot of little finches and stuff. Plus of course the woodpeckers and the jays, crows, mourning doves, and redwinged blackbirds that you find everywhere around here. There's also a pair of kites (or maybe merlins?) up on mt. wanda that we can spot at a long distance, their hovering is awesome.
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Apr 1, 2021 00:50
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If it's smallish and hovering it would be a kite or kestrel. Merlins are all business and usually go direct from point a to point b. Yeah, red-shoulders are super loud. Red-tails sound like what Bald Eagles sound like on TV (because real Bald Eagles sound too whimpy for amurican cinema).
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Apr 1, 2021 01:36
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Fitzy Fitz posted:I cannot ID hawks at all. No issues with any other birds. Just hawks. Accipiters (Coopers, sharp-shinned, etc.) vs. buteos (red-tailed, red-shouldered, etc.) is a good starting point and usually pretty straightforward by looking at tail length and general size/bulkiness. But yeah, positively IDing the specific species can be tricky, especially with the variability within a species like red-tailed. Coopers vs. sharp-shinned is always a classic challenge too. The ones that kill me the most are gulls and shorebirds. I get a little bit better with them each year but there are so many little nuances that I feel like they both need more devoted study time beyond just going out in the field over and over. Coming across a huge group of either type and not knowing where to even begin is pretty humbling when you otherwise feel pretty confident with other birds.
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Apr 1, 2021 02:43
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Thank you. Accipiter vs buteo is a great starting point. I'm not bad at picking out defining characteristics, but there's so much variation within hawk species.
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Apr 1, 2021 02:52
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Depending on where you are red-tailed vs red shoulder is normally down to the belly band on the red tailed. At least for me. Eventually you wind up noticing the heads look materially different. If there are any "see a hawk up close" things when stuff returns to normal try and see a red shouldered and compare to up close pictures of red tailed. That sorta sealed it for me.
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Apr 1, 2021 03:45
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LA River has more birdlife than expected.     
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Apr 7, 2021 07:04
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Herons in trees just look bizarre imho
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Apr 7, 2021 15:50
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Cross posting from the bird photography thread: I finally got out to see the Great-Horned Owl nest near me (Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA) with my camera and decent lighting. Great-Horned Owl  Great-Horned Owl  Great-Horned Owl  Great-Horned Owl  Great-Horned Owl
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Apr 10, 2021 03:17
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 owl babies are Muppets.
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Apr 10, 2021 03:38
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I love owls! On one of the hikes we do every other week or so, there's a side-trail where we've heard a great horned hooting a couple or three times. Haunting and awesome to be walking very quietly through the trees and suddenly hear it echoing around. We haven't spotted it though. I'd really like to. BTW thanks for the binocular recommendations, I wound up going with the Nikon Prostaff compact ones. Haven't gotten to go out and use them yet (wife got food poisoning last week, is still recovering).
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Apr 12, 2021 17:51
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Nice! I just saw a great-horned owl for the first time (not counting zoos) last weekend. High Park, in Toronto. Here's a lovely cell-phone-held-up-to-my-binoculars pic They also had wood ducks, my favorite duck: 
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Apr 13, 2021 19:10
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I've got a new beta version of my feeder cam up, which adds machine learning to do species identification. It's pretty good...  ...but also makes some  mistakes that's not a great blue heron Bonus pre-identification pic. Poor buddy was too heavy and triggered the squirrel lock. When this thing works it's really good 
dupersaurus fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Apr 16, 2021 |
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Apr 16, 2021 01:35
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HELLO I went to the woods today and saw some babies on the move with their very concerned mama:  Hooded merganser. Western PA. Also spotted some hooded warblers, a first for me!
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May 13, 2021 04:06
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Awesome! The merganserlettes are so cute. Cool about the Hooded Warblers too, that's a classy one. I've fallen in love with Hermit Warblers. They only migrate through here so it's pretty rad to find one.  Gyuto Hermit Warbler-1233 on FlickrTownends are more common but they're actually doing a little singing now.  Gyuto Townsends Warbler-1370 on Flickr
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May 13, 2021 04:30
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BetterLekNextTime posted:Awesome! The merganserlettes are so cute. I know, I just wish I could have gotten a better shot! Mama was intent on moving those babies away from us, and the trail was only so close to the creek. I love love looove warblers, and yours are gorgeous.
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May 13, 2021 16:39
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I've recently gotten into bird watching so I picked up some 8x42s and one of those adapters to keep your phone in place. As I was testing them out a red tailed hawk landed on a light post about 20 feet from me  Works pretty well but I found recording video easier to stay focused and get better shots
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May 16, 2021 03:12
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A very handsome bird!
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May 16, 2021 07:29
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I need some birb identification help, I don't know poo poo about them. I'm in Austin, never seen a bird around here like this. These are babies of some sort, although they are huge for a bird still in the nest. Haven't seen the parent around yet. I'd think they were a hawk or falcon of some kind due to the size if their beaks were different. They have black and white striped coloring, which I assume is their juvenile coloring, a yellow racing strip on their head and a white horizontal line under their eyes. Last pic for a better look at scale.    
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May 17, 2021 15:38
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My impulse is yellow crowned night heron, but those would be the adults you're looking at, and those are some remarkably yellow crowns. I'm gonna stick with this guess, though. Only thing that makes sense. The juveniles would be kind of brown stripey. Any fish parts on or around the area? That's what happens when my uncle gets yellow crowns in his tree during the Dallas spring/summer. Fish parts everywhere. my cat is norris fucked around with this message at 16:49 on May 17, 2021 |
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May 17, 2021 16:46
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Definitely Yellow Crowned Night Herons. I used to live up by Walnut Creek in North Austin and saw a few of those up there. They are wild looking birds.
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May 17, 2021 16:54
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creatine posted:I've recently gotten into bird watching so I picked up some 8x42s and one of those adapters to keep your phone in place. As I was testing them out a red tailed hawk landed on a light post about 20 feet from me Nice pics Where did you get your adapter?
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May 17, 2021 16:55
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HappyHippo posted:Nice pics Thanks! I just grabbed One of these off Amazon Pretty easy to set up but I find that the easiest thing is to just leave the phone mounted and just use the remaining eye piece for spotting and focusing
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May 17, 2021 17:26
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my cat is norris posted:My impulse is yellow crowned night heron, but those would be the adults you're looking at, and those are some remarkably yellow crowns. Yeah after googling this is correct. I assumed they were large juveniles who hadn't flown yet because they are always there but it turns out that's just because they prefer to hunt at night. I had thought they were possibly some kind of fishing bird because of their beak shape, but didn't take them for a heron because the very short neck. Turns out that's just how they sit in the trees but then extend their necks when they are actually out hunting. Thanks!
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May 17, 2021 18:03
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creatine posted:Thanks! I just grabbed One of these off Amazon Cool, thanks. I saw a website where you can get one customized to your phone/bins but it was like $100. This is much more affordable.
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May 17, 2021 19:14
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HappyHippo posted:Cool, thanks. I saw a website where you can get one customized to your phone/bins but it was like $100. This is much more affordable. This thing would fit a pretty wide range of current phones. It's pretty adjustable
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May 18, 2021 00:54
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I was out for a bike ride yesterday and saw a pretty large bird of prey on the side of the trail, and I was really surprised how close it let me get before flying away. I've got a generally good field guide for my area (northern Sierra Nevada) but not quite able to tell what it is using that, nothing looks _quite_ right to my eyes. Can anyone help identify it? My "not a bird person" eyes tell me it's either a red tailed hawk or a subadult bald eagle maybe?  
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May 24, 2021 23:33
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Steve French posted:I was out for a bike ride yesterday and saw a pretty large bird of prey on the side of the trail, and I was really surprised how close it let me get before flying away. I've got a generally good field guide for my area (northern Sierra Nevada) but not quite able to tell what it is using that, nothing looks _quite_ right to my eyes. Can anyone help identify it? My "not a bird person" eyes tell me it's either a red tailed hawk or a subadult bald eagle maybe? Definitely not eagle. I would lean towards Red-tail (usually a good place to start since they are so common and variable), but I'm not sure I can totally eliminate light Swainson's or Ferruginous. Definitely an intriguing bird! This is from a couple of weeks ago, but I had Lazuli Bunting and Western Bluebird almost side by side in a photo. These were taken less than a minute apart, same branch. One of these days I'll get a pic of them hanging out together!  Wildcat Lazuli Bunting-2205 on Flickr Wildcat Bluebird ATFL-2203 on Flickr
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May 25, 2021 00:30
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I think a group of chimney swifts must have a nest around me, I've seen about 5 of them every day for a week flying around my apartment. They're hard to get a picture of on a phone. A week ago when I first saw them, it was a bit rainy and I saw one of them take a dive at a red-tailed hawk. The hawk spent the rest of the night roosting in a nearby tree, probably because of the weather.
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May 26, 2021 01:01
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Where do you live? I see them (or hear them chittering) basically every day in Toronto.
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May 26, 2021 18:37
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I just watched a red-bellied woodpecker, robin, and cardinal fight over a baby snake. The woodpecker won, obviously, and horked it down.
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May 26, 2021 18:45
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HappyHippo posted:Where do you live? I see them (or hear them chittering) basically every day in Toronto. I'm near Chicago. Never noticed them before, but it's not like I've been paying attention all that long  . Unfortunately they're on the decline from nesting site loss.
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May 26, 2021 22:11
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I never noticed chimney swifts for most of my life, but then again I barely noticed any birds at all until I actually got into birding. One of the only exceptions was the robins that would hop around on the lawn. It’s amazing how things change once you start paying attention, because now I can’t go anywhere without seeing or hearing stuff, and making mental notes of it all. On more than one occasion I’ve also seen people assume that swifts were bats. I’m guessing that’s not an unusual mistake.
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May 27, 2021 03:34
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waffy posted:It’s amazing how things change once you start paying attention, because now I can’t go anywhere without seeing or hearing stuff, and making mental notes of it all. This is so true and I had the same experience learning to identify trees
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May 27, 2021 16:32
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