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Those pics are great! I have The Shorebird Guide, which was linked earlier I think and is really pretty excellent. Shorebirds of North America, Europe, and Asia is also very good, but might be a bit too broad since it covers just about the entire world. For the gulls, Gulls of the Americas is the best I've found with tons of examples of plumage variations and comparisons between the species, hybrids, the different age groups and such. Gulls and shorebirds are really challenging!
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Sep 15, 2013 18:36
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I'd agree with the Pectoral ID. I might go with Black-bellied on the large plover based on what looks like a relatively heavy bill, but I wouldn't put a ton of money on it. Always nice if you can get a glimpse of the armpits in flight or during a wing-stretch: black-bellied have black axillaries and goldens do not.
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Sep 15, 2013 18:45
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Those pics are great! I have The Shorebird Guide, which was linked earlier I think and is really pretty excellent. Shorebirds of North America, Europe, and Asia is also very good, but might be a bit too broad since it covers just about the entire world. For the gulls, Gulls of the Americas is the best I've found with tons of examples of plumage variations and comparisons between the species, hybrids, the different age groups and such. Gulls and shorebirds are really challenging! I have both the Shorebird Guide and the Peterson Gull guide. As I believe I stated earlier, the Shorebird Guide is excellent. Big, beautiful photos, with lots of real-world type photos with plenty of other species in the frame for comparison. Good text, huge selection of rare species in a separate section. I'm lukewarm on the Gull Guide. Tons of photos, but they're all pretty small and have a distinct color cast to them that really hinders them. I think the photos were taken on film which resulted in fewer, lower quality shots. Steve Howell did the text. He tends to, in my experience, be very thorough but verbose. I have a hard time making it through more than a page or two before I get bored or sleepy. I'd say that it's a good book to check out from the library first or buy used for cheap.
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Sep 15, 2013 21:03
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That's another reason location is important. If I had known the location I could have had a better idea of Franklin's Gull which is rare out here. Not trying to pick on the picture poster just showing beginning birders why these things are needed info 
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Sep 15, 2013 21:43
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Those pics are great! I have The Shorebird Guide, which was linked earlier I think and is really pretty excellent. Shorebirds of North America, Europe, and Asia is also very good, but might be a bit too broad since it covers just about the entire world. For the gulls, Gulls of the Americas is the best I've found with tons of examples of plumage variations and comparisons between the species, hybrids, the different age groups and such. Gulls and shorebirds are really challenging!
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Sep 15, 2013 21:59
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Remember to read the text in these guides. Don't only look at the pics. The text in guides can really help you out.
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Sep 15, 2013 22:03
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BeastOfExmoor posted:I'm lukewarm on the Gull Guide. Tons of photos, but they're all pretty small and have a distinct color cast to them that really hinders them. I think the photos were taken on film which resulted in fewer, lower quality shots. Steve Howell did the text. He tends to, in my experience, be very thorough but verbose. I have a hard time making it through more than a page or two before I get bored or sleepy. I'd say that it's a good book to check out from the library first or buy used for cheap. Those are all totally valid criticisms. I just havent been able to find a guide that's better. Is there one you would recommend? I wouldn't mind getting my hands on another guide that made learning gulls less of a chore.
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Sep 16, 2013 00:18
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Those are all totally valid criticisms. I just havent been able to find a guide that's better. Is there one you would recommend? I wouldn't mind getting my hands on another guide that made learning gulls less of a chore. From what I can tell, Gulls of Europe, Asia and North America is the only other similar book and it's price is...high to say the least. There's a Facebook group full of Gull photos and posts that I find pretty interesting. The things I feel like the Peterson Guide is missing are things like side-by-side shots of various parts of the Gulls. Profile shots of heads w/ bills, mantles w/ primary projection, etc. I've actually thought of generating my own flash cards using Ankidroid and photos I source from the internet, but I haven't gotten around to it. InternetJunky posted:Thanks for the links. I will admit I just bought both (and a warbler guide and sparrow guide). Hah, that's awesome. That sparrow guide is really tempting, but I haven't gotten to check it out in person yet. I just got the Warbler Guide. It's great, but I haven't had much motivation to check it out since we have just a few warbler species where I live and they're all pretty easy to distinguish.
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Sep 16, 2013 01:52
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BeastOfExmoor posted:From what I can tell, Gulls of Europe, Asia and North America is the only other similar book and it's price is...high to say the least. That does look pretty good from what little I can see on Amazon. Paintings are almost always preferable to photos. I might actually lay down $60 just for that. Or I could just go out to the coast/river/sewage treatment plant with some legit good birders I guess. Which sparrow guide did you order, InternetJunky? Was it this one? A friend of mine has it and it seems pretty solid. I should probably get that one as well. On the subject of books, Owls of the World is loving fantastic. It has phenomenal photographs and tons of info. The person who put it together must be utterly obsessed with owls. Here's some sample pages.
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Sep 16, 2013 04:12
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800peepee51doodoo posted:That does look pretty good from what little I can see on Amazon. Paintings are almost always preferable to photos. I might actually lay down $60 just for that. Or I could just go out to the coast/river/sewage treatment plant with some legit good birders I guess. Which sparrow guide did you order, InternetJunky? Was it this one? A friend of mine has it and it seems pretty solid. I should probably get that one as well. I don't know how to tell, but the original printings of that Gulls book had serious issues and errors and it was recalled. I think you'd be fine if buying new, but you may want to figure out how to tell the difference. That Owls book is indeed amazing. I have no reason to have a reference book that includes all those owl species, but I'll probably end up with it someday.
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Sep 16, 2013 06:52
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Which sparrow guide did you order, InternetJunky? Was it this one? A friend of mine has it and it seems pretty solid. I should probably get that one as well. So the Shorebird Guide still doesn't really clear up if I got a shot of a black-bellied plover or an american golden-plover. I've had 4 veteran birdwatchers respond to my inquiry in a local mailing list -- 2 saying it's a black-bellied and another 2 saying golden. The biggest defining characteristic seems to be the 4 primary feathers extending beyond the tertials on the golden, and none of my shots clearly show that area. Too bad too since the golden plover is much rarer than the black-bellied around here so I'd love to know conclusively one way or the other.
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Sep 16, 2013 14:57
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My wife and I are planning on visiting her sister and nephews in the Dublin area for Thanksgiving. While we're there, I'd like to get in a bit of casual birding. Is anyone in this thread familiar with birding spots around Dublin, that are accessible by rail or bus? My sister-in-law has a car, but I'd prefer not to have to brush up on my rusty stick-shift skills while simultaneously learning to drive on the opposite side of the road. Also, is there an online resource for birds to be seen in Ireland. eBird's bar charts aren't terribly helpful since they're only built from a small number of checklists?
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Sep 18, 2013 14:01
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The state of birds of prey in the north of England is all rather depressing http://raptorpolitics.org.uk/2013/09/17/bowland-raptors-the-final-solution/
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Sep 18, 2013 20:07
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Pablo Bluth posted:The state of birds of prey in the north of England is all rather depressing That's an awful shame. Does England have anything comparable to the endangered species act that could be invoked if they have a change in government? The peregrines are starting to show up in numbers in my stretch of Northern California now, and I'm getting a close look at them for the first time. They really are fantastic birds. 
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Sep 18, 2013 20:17
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EPICAC posted:My wife and I are planning on visiting her sister and nephews in the Dublin area for Thanksgiving. While we're there, I'd like to get in a bit of casual birding. Don't know the answer, but you might start here: http://www.dublinbirding.ie/ Maybe you can find a link to an email list somewhere and post a question. Birders are generally really helpful in answering questions about planning visits. It helps if you specify a little bit about what you want (particular species or habitats you'd like to see).
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Sep 18, 2013 20:23
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Pablo Bluth posted:The state of birds of prey in the north of England is all rather depressing I'm understanding the link correctly, people are shooting reptors because they eat Grouse which hunters want in higher numbers? It surprises me quite a bit that this is an issue. Coming from someone who's never been to Europe, my impression has been that birders are way a way larger and more powerful group in Britain and hunters are way less powerful.
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Sep 18, 2013 20:42
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Only a minority of our population are shooters, but the estates are owned by the landed gentry and shooting is a sport of the ruling class. Two hen harriers dead, one prince questioned, no charges.
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Sep 18, 2013 20:51
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Pablo Bluth posted:The state of birds of prey in the north of England is all rather depressing  It's not like the situation is much better in North America though. I found a long-eared owl that had been shot this spring, one of the red-tail hawks I helped band had missing tail feathers from a shot gun blast, and I know of several people who brag about shooting hawks/owls.
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Sep 18, 2013 21:17
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InternetJunky posted:This was a really sad read. People here have been shooting and trapping raptors to protect their retarded pigeons. Luckily the Migratory Bird Act makes this a an actual crime and people have been arrested for it. 800peepee51doodoo fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 22:04
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Holy poo poo, eBird added a hotspot explorer! Very cool. You can zoom in to a location or search for an area, click on it and it will display a species list that you can sort by last seen. Its pretty much exactly what I was asking for a few days ago in this thread. Super stoked about this, its baller as gently caress.
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Sep 19, 2013 06:22
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Sep 20, 2013 08:25
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Birds are pretty awesome, and I like them a lot. We mostly get juncos and chickadees in our yard though Stellar's jays and rufous (I think) hummingbirds pass through pretty frequently too. Probably the most memorable sighting in my yard though was about two years ago when I saw either a Cooper's hawk or a peregrine falcon going to town on a starling right in my front yard. It had just snowed, but after it flew off there was not even a speck of blood visible, just a small pile of feathers. Is is ok to ask taxonomy-related questions here too, or is that beyond the scope of the thread?
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Sep 20, 2013 09:14
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BeastOfExmoor posted:I'm understanding the link correctly, people are shooting reptors because they eat Grouse which hunters want in higher numbers? It surprises me quite a bit that this is an issue. Coming from someone who's never been to Europe, my impression has been that birders are way a way larger and more powerful group in Britain and hunters are way less powerful. Public access rights are often poor or non-existent on the lands where this takes place and the areas that need observing are pretty enormous. With poisoning, nest destruction and trapping, there's no out-of-season shooting sounds to alert people either. These wildlife crimes are often only discovered by complete accident - typically buried caches of dead raptors or someone walking on a rarely visited area of open-access land and discovering poisoned bait or cages/snares with dead protected species. When prosecutions do take place, they're typically against the incredibly poorly paid gamekeeper (his accommodation in a keeper's cottage is often part of the pay) rather than the site owner. The fines are thus fairly low and often the keeper goes straight back into employment with their original boss. Scotland introduced vicarious liability legislation that holds the site owner responsible for wildlife crimes performed by his staff on his estate and the early signs are that this is working quite well there. But our environment and wildlife ministers don't seem interested in introducing this in England. On a related note, this government's environmental ministers have turned down attempts to ban the possession of carbofuran (a poison often used in raptor poisoning cases that EU law already makes illegal to use) and pushed for the culling of buzzards which are still slowly expanding back to their pre-DDT range (this time to protect pheasants - a non-native species dumped into the countryside in their millions each year for the express purpose of charging wealthy people a lot of money to go shooting them). It's a tiny, incredibly wealthy part of our population who have the ear of our government and own a disgustingly large portion of the land who're doing this. It's just another symptom of my country's screwed-up class system. Balaeniceps fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 13:21
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stubblyhead posted:Birds are pretty awesome, and I like them a lot. We mostly get juncos and chickadees in our yard though Stellar's jays and rufous (I think) hummingbirds pass through pretty frequently too. Probably the most memorable sighting in my yard though was about two years ago when I saw either a Cooper's hawk or a peregrine falcon going to town on a starling right in my front yard. It had just snowed, but after it flew off there was not even a speck of blood visible, just a small pile of feathers. I think that's fine- a big part of bird lists is keeping up with the taxonomic changes.
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Sep 20, 2013 16:26
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BetterLekNextTime posted:I think that's fine- a big part of bird lists is keeping up with the taxonomic changes. OK, maybe that answers my question actually. National Geographic had an article on cassowaries last month, and I was reading more about them on wikipedia. There seems to be some conflicting information about their classification though--the general general cassowary article puts them in the order Struthioniformes, but individual species articles (southern cassowary for instance) lists them as being in Casuariiformes. Is this just an instance of an order being split or of two orders being combined?
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Sep 20, 2013 19:19
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I don't know the exact answer to your question, but it could be due contention on the naming side (what should be elevated to order status), and/or to updates in the estimated phylogenies that might put cassowaries more or less closely related to ostriches. Ratite phylogenies seem like they are getting revised fairly frequently. This is definitely a case where wikipedia could easily not be self-consistent across or even within articles. Unfortunately I don't actually know what the authority is- there's Clements' checklist that shows cassowaries in Struthioniformes. It can be difficult enough to determine what a species is, so figuring out which groups are families vs. orders (vs. superfamilies, suborders...) is definitely somewhat subjective. In other news, have a birding video game/quiz from Swarovski (saw this on the Eagle Optics feed). Note that the silhouette doesn't match the bird that's pulled up for the question.
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Sep 20, 2013 19:52
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Balaeniceps posted:stuff
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Sep 20, 2013 20:09
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InternetJunky posted:I would love confirmation on some IDs: This one is driving me insane because I saw it's identical twin with a group of Black Bellied Plovers on Friday, but I forgot my field guide in the car and didn't bring my camera because getting to where I was going required walking through submerged logs in the dark with a flashlight and dunking $1500 worth of camera gear in salt water was not something I wanted to risk. Of course I made notes of every little detail other than the primary projection. I still think your bird is a Golden.
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Sep 23, 2013 17:10
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BeastOfExmoor posted:This one is driving me insane because I saw it's identical twin with a group of Black Bellied Plovers on Friday, but I forgot my field guide in the car and didn't bring my camera because getting to where I was going required walking through submerged logs in the dark with a flashlight and dunking $1500 worth of camera gear in salt water was not something I wanted to risk. Of course I made notes of every little detail other than the primary projection. I still think your bird is a Golden. quote:is a black-bellied plover P squatarola. The bill size & structure alone rule out pacific or any other golden plover. Also the coloration in general would be exceptionally light gray for any golden-plover species, plus the dark spots on head are not "sufficiently" dark.. On the topic of bird IDs however, I'm still struggling with sparrow-sized birds. I picked up "Sparrows of the United States and Canada" hoping it would help with ID, but it's really quite useless to be honest. Short of flipping through 300 pages hoping to see a picture of something similar there's no easy way to get an ID with it. Here's a couple from yesterday I would love some help with: Female Chestnut-collard Longspur seems to match the closest but I'm a bit out of it's range according to the guidebook.  No clue for this one  I'm in Edmonton, Alberta and these were taken about 1 hour to the south-east.
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Sep 23, 2013 17:23
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InternetJunky posted:I think I've settled on black-bellied for this one. I received this reply from a birding mailing list I posted on, and it sounds like they know what they are talking about : Vesper sparrow? I'm not awesome with sparrows either, especially mid-contintental ones, but the pink bill, rufous shoulder patch, eye ring, and what looks like could be white outer edging on the outer tail feathers would be consistent. I went out yesterday to try for one of the blue-footed boobies that have been seen up and down the California coast, but struck out. Lots of birders out there. Funniest thing was a couple of non-birder women were there who were talking to a fairly shy college-aged male birder. One of the women was pretty well endowed and spilling out of her shirt, and the guy was too embarrassed to say what bird everyone was looking for.
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Sep 23, 2013 18:22
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InternetJunky posted:I think I've settled on black-bellied for this one. I received this reply from a birding mailing list I posted on, and it sounds like they know what they are talking about : Damnit. You have me rethinking my ID again. I agree on Sparrows. At least shorebirds and gulls tend to be walking around in the open and don't constantly fly. First one I'd lean towards Vesper Sparrow. What I'm seeing of the CC Lonspur in my reference materials show wing patterns that look distinctly different from that. None of the photos I can find show quite as bright of facial markings as that one shows though, so perhaps I'm way off base. Second one looks pretty Vesper Sparrowish as well, but I'm dealing with a very limited "sparrow vocabulary".
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Sep 23, 2013 20:41
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Someone asked why it is not called bird watching anymore, this could be a reason http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Birdwatching I think it is a generation or two old but it is still around. Not sure you want to use that one around the wrong company. And I actually enjoyed 'The Big Year' Most environmentally themed movies are cheesy and corny as gently caress. Owen's brother Luke was in one that dealt with burrowing owls and that was genuinely bad. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoot_%28film%29 I am only into birds once I have exhausted my interest in plants, lichens and mushrooms. At least those things stay still.
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Sep 24, 2013 17:04
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Cool thread. My grandmother was an avid birder and travelled with her sisters all over the US to see birds. She had the exact date of the first time she saw every species (except local birds; "Northern Cardinal: father's farm approx. 1934") and the checklist in her field guide was almost complete. I'm more casual about it. I do a lot of mountain biking so I like to ride deep into forest, find a rock to sit on, and watch with my binoculars. Recently I've been fortunate to see common terns diving for fish in a small pond, a green heron taking frogs, and loads of pileated woodpeckers mostly chilling around their tree holes. I heard a bunch of owls on my last time out but couldn't locate them. I'm envious of a lot of pictures you guys are getting in here. I need to get a nicer camera and a big lens. Can we talk about feeding in this thread too or is it just for identifying? Edit: lovely grammar FingersMaloy fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Sep 24, 2013 |
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Sep 24, 2013 17:07
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BetterLekNextTime posted:Vesper sparrow? BeastOfExmoor posted:Damnit. You have me rethinking my ID again. On that subject, why do the guides have to be so useless in the way they present their information? That sparrow guide has lots of nice pictures, but flipping through 300 pages hoping to find a match isn't a great help.
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Sep 24, 2013 17:18
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InternetJunky posted:The consensus from other sources is Vesper for both pictures as well, so good job guys. Apparently I have a long way to go with IDs. We definitely need something like the O'Brian shorebird guide but for sparrows. The Sparrows of North America book is definitely most useful if you already know what the bird is.
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Sep 24, 2013 18:00
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FingersMaloy posted:Can we talk about feeding this thread to or is it just for identifying? Anything is fair game as far as I'm concerned. InternetJunky posted:The consensus from other sources is Vesper for both pictures as well, so good job guys. Apparently I have a long way to go with IDs. Nobody has quite solved this riddle yet. Certain birds are easier than others. The Shorebird Guide has a nice chart of silhouettes in the back that works really well for those species, but obviously wouldn't work well at all for sparrows. I typically start out with my Sibley guide. Typically I can narrow it down a bit to begin with. The bird did not appear to be one of what I think of as the "distinct sparrows." IE, White-Crowned, Golden-Crowned, White-Throated, Chipping, etc. Basically birds that usually have some kind of distinct marks. Once I get those out of the way I start looking at the distinct features and try to eliminate species. Being somewhat familiar with some of the "tells" in the first place helps a lot. The bold white eye ring made me think Vesper Sparrow right away so I started there, but I knew you probably had species I wasn't familiar with so I had to go through all of them slowly. The second photo really threw me for a bit because I've never seen Vesper's raise a crest like that. In fact, I actually had a sparrow a couple weeks ago that I saw poorly that had a profile very similar to that, but I wrote it off as a Lincoln's or Savannah based on the crest alone. I find it easier and easier to ID birds in the field the more I read and the longer I bird. Things like that primary projection on Golden Plovers or the white outer tail feathers of a Vesper Sparrow that are visible in flight stick in my mind once I know them and next time I'm looking at an unknown bird I know to pay attention to that.
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Sep 24, 2013 18:15
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BetterLekNextTime posted:We definitely need something like the O'Brian shorebird guide but for sparrows. The Sparrows of North America book is definitely most useful if you already know what the bird is. As long as we're making requests, us west coast folks who reside close to salt water could really use a guide to Alcids. Perhaps video guide to take into account the fact that 90% of the Alcids I see are in flight and I'm trying to make my judgment based on wing length and flapping speed. I was so annoyed when I realized the Peterson Sea Watch book was east coast only 
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Sep 24, 2013 18:23
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BeastOfExmoor posted:As long as we're making requests, us west coast folks who reside close to salt water could really use a guide to Alcids. Perhaps video guide to take into account the fact that 90% of the Alcids I see are in flight and I'm trying to make my judgment based on wing length and flapping speed. I was so annoyed when I realized the Peterson Sea Watch book was east coast only That would be awesome. I feel like there's a lot more variation in those guys than ever shows up in the field guides. Even good looks at a floating murrelet can be pretty hard. I don't know how the pelagic guides figure out those tubenoses...
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Sep 24, 2013 18:41
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You can tell it's a Vesper Sparrow because it's sitting on a fence post.  I have never seen one anywhere else.
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Sep 24, 2013 19:27
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So we have a passageway between two buildings where birds have a hard time. Either they hit the windows and die, or they get stuck / lost in there until they exhaust themselves. They have a really hard time finding their way out because of all the windows. For the second time, I saw a Brown Creeper lying on the ground. You know it's bad to see that, because they're a creeping bird that doesn't perch or lay on the ground. I figured it was dead, but my heart sank when I got close to it and saw its little head move. I was terrified that it had broken its wings by flying into the building. I had to know for sure, so I went to pick it up... and it flew a little bit and grabbed onto my left leg! It was okay! Totally exhausted, but okay. So I had to get it out of there. I scooped it up, it tried to fly a bit and immediately landed on my shirt (believe it or not, this is the second Brown Creeper that has used me as a nice tree trunk to rest on). I quickly covered it so it wouldn't fly away, and I walked it to the nearby bike path. I opened my hands, petted its little head, waited a moment, and it flew straight to the biggest tree trunk it saw. So happy.  
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Sep 26, 2013 20:42
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