Birding and Bird Photography

You are close my friend. But it is an Anhinga. The crappy quality photos make it hard to see the bill.

 

Aww fuck.
I thought you were west coast and didn't look close enough. Ok, this stings. Thanks for correcting me.

Now that I looked closer, I should have noticed that. The dark belly is wrong for juvenile DC Cormorant (tan should extend down into belly of DC cor.).

Damnit, now I'm mad at myself for jumping the gun. This will eat at me, so, again, thank you. Things like this improve my QA/QC and stop me from jumping to conclusions too quickly.

 

See, even pros do it!

 

A few shots from my trip to Big Bend National park last week.

Mexican Jay (very similar to western scrub jay)



Cactus Wren


Bewick's Wren


Say's Phoebe chilling on my camp burner

Help me identify this guy:


Notable definite sightings without photos:

Ruby Crowned Kinglet (little bastards are not adept at sitting still for a photo op)
Pyrrhuloxia (no, it wasn't a cardinal).

 

Your mystery bird is a dark-eyed junco (type of sparrow), but the "gray-headed" group or caniceps subspecies. Never seen a gray-headed myself, real cool. Their not as common as a lot of the other junco subspecies.

 

I do need a new bird book. I thought it was a dark eyed junco for obvious reasons but the rest of the bird didn’t match up. Didn’t know about the gray headed variety. Thanks!

 

I got this one for sparrows

Got other taxa specific books for shorebirds (3), owls (1), warblers (2) , gulls (2) , seabirds (2), raptors (6), etc.

 

Not the best photo shooting into the sun. Had 3 blue birds visit on Sunday morning. 2nd time in 10 years I’ve seen them.

 

Very nice. You should think about installing a bluebird house. There must be a lot of houses in my neighborhood, since I see bluebirds every time I take a walk. They don't normally hit standard bird feeders, but prefer meal worms.

 

Or there are a lot of natural cavities in your area (cavity nesting species).

I think I see a suet feeder, which bluebirds are known to love, versus seed feeders, which I've personally never seem them go for. They are omnivores, but primarily are insect eaters that supplement their diet with fruits like berries. The suets usually have fruit-like components plus insects embedded too, so they dig them.

I agree, installing a bird box would be fun. I use to manage 60 boxes for a research project, and it was fun monitoring the boxes.

 

My Bluebird boxes were never as active as after I started putting out mealworms. It's now a challenge to keep up !

 

Yes, that's the main reason I started putting out mealworms. Really brings those Blues in.
Great shot,btw.

 

Awesome pic.

 

Plan to make a few this winter along with a bat house as they seem to be returning in my area.

 

Thanks dand....

Fun to watch the various visitors to the feeder stations and take note of their preferences...
The Chickadees sample a bit from all the stations like a buffet where as the Bluebirds ignore all but the mealworms.

I especially like it when they bring their newly fledged offspring around to show them the ropes !

 

I do bird photography different than most, mainly due to having no photography skills on my part.

I set up a gopro at a food or water station and record high speed high definition video, then pull photos off the video.

 

I'll post a few.

 

A few more

 

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