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Where were you getting your list? If it's from a reputable source like the Audobon Society or a university, it should be good. But if it's just whatever came up in Google... The Merlin app will also tell you which birds are in your area for the current season based on past and real time data, which is one step better.
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Mar 10, 2023 17:39
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Merlin and maybe ebird
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Mar 10, 2023 17:53
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It was just some random list I got off Google. I never considered using an app to track them before and I just looked at eBird and there's hotspots, rare bird alerts and checklists localized to my area. I feel like I'm going down a rabbit hole.
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Mar 10, 2023 18:07
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HungryHungryHobo posted:It was just some random list I got off Google. I never considered using an app to track them before and I just looked at eBird and there's hotspots, rare bird alerts and checklists localized to my area. I feel like I'm going down a rabbit hole. one of us one of us
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Mar 10, 2023 18:10
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I also never saw Cedar Waxwings until becoming a more serious birder, but it was more likely that I just overlooked them. They don't visit feeders much, are about the size and shape of cardinals, and are less common, but they're around. I have a mulberry tree in my backyard and once a year an entire flock descends on that tree and decimates it. I use this as an opportunity to take pictures. Staking out a berry bush or tree is your best bet for them.
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Mar 10, 2023 19:25
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Unfortunately the bird tracking apps are a bit balkanized, there's the Audobon app, ebird, Merlin, iNaturalist (which is not just for birds but you can do birds on it), and probably several more. I wonder if there's any research branch that combines the tracking info in all these different apps into one database.
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Mar 10, 2023 19:41
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I saw a flock of waxwings in Yellowstone and got all excited until I realised they were "just" bohemians which we get this side of the Atlantic...
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Mar 10, 2023 20:46
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pseeeeeeeeeeee pseeeeeeeeeeeeeee I just saw maybe the biggest flock of Cedar Waxwings I've ever seen today, I'd guess at least 250 birds. They were on some power lines near my house and took up most of two spans between poles. Pretty cool. Definitely one of my favorite birds. Leperflesh posted:Unfortunately the bird tracking apps are a bit balkanized, there's the Audobon app, ebird, Merlin, iNaturalist (which is not just for birds but you can do birds on it), and probably several more. I wonder if there's any research branch that combines the tracking info in all these different apps into one database. I kind of doubt there is a combined database that is maintained but who knows someone might have put something together something for some subset of birds. It took the museum folks a while to even get combined databases of all collections together. The data for e.g. eBird and iNat are different enough that I'd imagine it's non-trivial to combine them. Luckily for a lot of areas they are both popular enough you could probably answer a lot of questions with just one or the other.
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Mar 10, 2023 23:36
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My fiance's mom gave me some binoculars (Nikon P3s), they are great. There are several elusive red tails in my area, usually gone as soon as you see them. Do bluebirds nest in the same cavity if they can every year? We had some last summer and a pair stopped by during a recent thaw to check out the nest box.
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Mar 11, 2023 01:04
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What kind of bluebirds, what is your area?
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Mar 11, 2023 01:09
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Leperflesh posted:What kind of bluebirds, what is your area? eastern bluebirds according to merlin, in the northeast US
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Mar 11, 2023 01:16
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What do you all recommend for a bird app focused on North America with minimal bullshit privacy issues and popups asking for money?
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Mar 11, 2023 01:16
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Psycho Society posted:My fiance's mom gave me some binoculars (Nikon P3s), they are great. There are several elusive red tails in my area, usually gone as soon as you see them. Do bluebirds nest in the same cavity if they can every year? We had some last summer and a pair stopped by during a recent thaw to check out the nest box. Yes, they often use the same cavities. mlmp08 posted:What do you all recommend for a bird app focused on North America with minimal bullshit privacy issues and popups asking for money? My favs are Sibley as a field guide equivalent and Merlin for sound ID (it's got photo id too but I don't use that as often). I'm on the old Sibley app so the new one might be subscription (or I might be thinking of iBird). I'm not sure what privacy concerns you have but many of these want location services to help filter likely species.
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Mar 11, 2023 01:22
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BetterLekNextTime posted:My favs are Sibley as a field guide equivalent and Merlin for sound ID (it's got photo id too but I don't use that as often). I'm on the old Sibley app so the new one might be subscription (or I might be thinking of iBird). I'm not sure what privacy concerns you have but many of these want location services to help filter likely species. Thanks. I don’t mind location when in use, but apps that ask for it nonstop get annoying.
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Mar 11, 2023 01:25
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HungryHungryHobo posted:It was just some random list I got off Google. I never considered using an app to track them before and I just looked at eBird and there's hotspots, rare bird alerts and checklists localized to my area. I feel like I'm going down a rabbit hole. Congrats, soon you will understand life as someone who’s Never Not Birding. A blessing and a curse. Re: app stuff, I think I’ve said it before in here but I’m a huge fan of Merlin just for the field guide portion of it (though I love the sound ID too). It can be used with your specific location and date and you can sort by which species are most likely based that information. And you can show bar charts for all months of the year on every species, based on ebird data. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s hard to overstate how useful that is for narrowing down an ID. Whenever I go somewhere new I just download the Merlin bird pack for the area and that’s all I ever feel like I need. Plus it’s free. The only con is that it is not as detailed in its descriptions/field mark info as some other sources.
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Mar 11, 2023 05:48
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Psycho Society posted:eastern bluebirds according to merlin, in the northeast US according to nestwatch, they dont even stay in the sam nest in the same season lol quote:After a successful clutch fledges, the female bluebird will often go off to build a second nest, leaving the male to care for the fledged young. https://nestwatch.org/learn/focal-species/eastern-bluebird/ Birdfact says quote:Do Eastern Bluebirds nest in the same place every year? So they might, and you can try, but more likely than not you won't get the same pair, since the male selects the site and then attracts a female. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Mar 11, 2023 |
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Mar 11, 2023 08:13
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mlmp08 posted:What do you all recommend for a bird app focused on North America with minimal bullshit privacy issues and popups asking for money? eBird and Merlin work great for me. I don't think either have privacy issues (although obviously if you track where you've seen birds the app will have that data) and both are completely free.
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Mar 11, 2023 09:52
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waffy posted:Congrats, soon you will understand life as someone who’s Never Not Birding. A blessing and a curse. As an example, I went for a run by a lake yesterday, so of course I didn't have my binoculars. There was a big flock of something out on the water, and it's been killing me that I couldn't ID them. I'm assuming they were hooded mergansers or greater scaups, but we've had loons pass through before!
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Mar 11, 2023 14:45
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ebird and Merlin are both Cornell lab projects (really, Merlin is an ebird project, which is a Cornell project). Both are excellent and free. Privacy issues should be essentially nonexistent.
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Mar 11, 2023 17:35
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Took merlin out on a long run, and it’s been great and easy already.
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Mar 11, 2023 19:55
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Hi thread! My job is working (primarily) with American oystercatchers, and they are a goofy, dramatic, sneaky pain in the rear end (and I love them anyways  ). These two had just gotten done making a little scrape (they nest directly on the beach, and just dig a small depression to lay eggs in) and weren’t acting suspicious about it at all, why would you even say that.  This one, a goose was just wandering around pecking at things and happened to wander too close to an oystercatcher nest. The parents tried to fight it, until the goose squared up and said “ok  ”
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Mar 15, 2023 13:33
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Hell yeah oystercatchers rule what is your job
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Mar 16, 2023 00:42
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Bloody posted:Hell yeah oystercatchers rule what is your job I monitor the beaches for their nests, among others (piping plovers, least/common/gull-billed terns, black skimmers). We’ve got ~10 pairs that set up shop where I monitor, number of fledges has been anywhere from 1-14 over the years I’ve been there. I also keep an eye out for sea turtle nesting, but that’s outside of this thread’s subject (they’re too good for the world  )e: rumors travel quick on the beach! 
Icon Of Sin fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Mar 16, 2023 |
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Mar 16, 2023 00:49
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Like other shorebirds they are much better fliers than they look when on the ground. You sort of expect them to be pigeon-like but they do cool acrobatic low to the water stuff instead.
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Mar 16, 2023 12:01
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The other weekend I rented some long lenses to try out, and what else was I going to use them on??? My hand-shooting is pretty garbage, but I ran out and got an actually-good tripod and  I did this planning to get me a good long lens, but instead I came out thinking it might be time to upgrade the camera... thinking D500 or maybe even jumping to mirrorless with an EOS R7. Pine Warbler  Blue Jay   Eastern Bluebirds  Mourning Dove  Purple Finches  Great Blue Heron  Great Northern Assholes  Carolina Wren  Brown-Headed Nuthatch
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Mar 16, 2023 15:09
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 I saw this on the Swedish west coast today. What kind of birb is this?
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Mar 21, 2023 17:25
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I believe it's Woodcock. Most likely is made a poor choice of resting location between nocturnal movement. It's trusting you can't see it due to its camouflage, and it'll move away overnight. Pablo Bluth fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Mar 21, 2023 |
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Mar 21, 2023 17:51
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Pablo Bluth posted:I believe it's Woodcock. You're right! Wow I've never seen one before.
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Mar 21, 2023 17:59
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I've only seen one, which for some reason was stood in the middle of an empty carpark during thep day.
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Mar 21, 2023 18:04
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This one was hiding near a concrete mold at a construction site in the middle of Gothenburg. You can see the fence "foot" from my picture by the door.
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Mar 21, 2023 18:07
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It's definitely a migrating bird that has picked a bad place to sleep during the day. It'll be gone tomorrow morning. Both the Merlin and ObsIdentify apps correctly identify it as woodcock from your photo. Both apps are free and well worth it.
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Mar 21, 2023 18:13
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It's not bad camouflage. I only saw it because I compulsively look at everything off-of the path I walk.
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Mar 21, 2023 18:17
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I just got myself a new camera! I hope to take lots of bird pics. This is my first decent bird pic with it. A happy little chickadee. 
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Mar 24, 2023 23:40
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Eurasian Woodcocks seem to be relatively common in the middle of cities on spring migration, the first sightings here (Helsinki) were in random courtyards too this year
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Mar 26, 2023 10:51
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I want to give a shout out to BirdNET-Pi which allows you to set up an RPi to listen to bird calls and will automagically ID them for your pleasure. That said, I don't have a spare Pi3B+ laying around so I used an old laptop and had to figure out how to port it from arm to x86 but it's been totally worth it to figure out what loud rear end bird is responsible for all the noise in my backyard. 
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Mar 29, 2023 12:20
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From that image, I can hear your backyard (it's the same as mine).
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Mar 29, 2023 12:36
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Got to see a harpy eagle real up close. wonderful big bird
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Apr 4, 2023 20:27
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FITEBIRB doesn’t care that you were roosting in their walking path. 
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Apr 7, 2023 13:07
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A piping plover! This guy was too busy foraging to care about us. He’s got a flag band on him, and nests here every year. Hasn’t been successful, but that doesn’t keep him from trying. 
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Apr 15, 2023 21:28
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Just saw Brutus, my resident bluebird, chase a cheeky cowbird from his nest. Good job little buddy
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Apr 16, 2023 22:59
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