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As a bird and wildlife photographer, it's fun, but I would invest in a nice pair of 8x42 binoculars before I'd invest in a camera for bird photography. Because they're often small and far away and active in low light, it's hard to get decent shots with a point-and-shoot. A decent enough DSLR body can be found for under $300 used, but you're still going to need a big telephoto lens that'll cost at least that much (mine is considered "entry level" and was $900 new). It's not that you can't snap pictures with less, but just that you'll probably be disappointed with the results and having some really sick bins will make your life so much better.
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Apr 28, 2021 15:09
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:41 |
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BetterLekNextTime posted:For North American folks, MerlinID apparently added a new feature to try to ID birds by sound recordings. I know there's been more limited tests of stuff like this (e.g. for flight calls of night-migrating birds, or for smaller regions when a known set of species can be assembled beforehand), but it would be cool if this would work for birds in general. My guess is it will probably be like the photo version – crappy at first for some species but as more people try to use it it may actually become helpful. Cornell has had an app called BirdNet for this and it works pretty well - I'm guessing they just rolled that functionality into Merlin.
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Jun 30, 2021 03:30
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Pileated are big birds and prefer forest. The most common backyard woodpecker is a downy woodpecker, which can be hard to tell from a hairy woodpecker (bigger bird with bigger beak) but it's certainly possible that's what you've got! If you want woodpeckers, they love suet feeders. We went out to a localish mountain in MA to catch migrating broad-winged hawks and we had a nice hour of just seeing raptor after raptor. Bald eagle, merlins, a peregrine falcon, and a lot of close buzzes from red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures.
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Oct 5, 2021 04:32
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