Bird Id Part 3

[mjs1973]

Not the greatest shots, but I was THRILLED to see this beautuful bird!!! Not a very common bird my neck of the woods, but there are a few that have migrated to Wisconsin this winter. This bird and location is going in the Sunday paper so I'm sure there will be tons of people looking for it until it either gets hit by a car, or flys north again. I'm glad I got to see it before it hit the paper. Some birders told me about some more in the area so I might have to see if I can find them. I drove an hour for this one, and the others, are further yet. Well worth the drive tho.

[paulnj]

HOW CLOSE WERE YOU???

I have seen about a dozen along the coast in NJ/Long Island and they are very hard to get close too! I took 45 minutes to crawl up to within 50 feet of one once with 540mm on film and that wasn't close enough!!

Seriously, if your getting snowy owls, then you very well have boreal owls, hawkowl, sawhet owls and very slim chance of gyrfalcons too. great grey is a given

[Knight]

Great Capture , how close were you able to get ? And did you scare it off ? I have never had the chance to C one of these . good shots

[mjs1973]

I was able to get fairly close to this, but it's never close enough. I'm terible with guessing distance... I was sitting directly behind the SUV in this pick. They were parked there, watching it sitting on a post in the middle of the field to the right, and it flew up and landed on the post right in front of them. I didn't scare it away, and neither did any of the other cars and trucks that were stopping, many of them closer than I was. What eventually spooked the bird was a guy in a BRIGHT yellow shirt, on a bicycle that was riding past. Then it flew up and landed on top of a silo. Not the one in this pic, but one further off to the right. It sat there till dark, before starting to hunt up and down the line of telephone poles. Here is an uncropped version of the bird on the telephone pole.

[Knight]

Thanks for the info , it makes good reading . I think its kinda cool for people to write a few words on how they got some of there photos

[paulnj]

No way will that owl stay in that area for too long! Being that it's young(plumage) it will stay longer than a smart one will That area has a good amount of mice to eat(all farms do), but snowy owls are TUNDRA birds that need ALOT of open space and are leary of people.

Cars and people scare the crap out of owls usually(the rare cases are airports), so they fly to a less populated area once stressed too much. Putting it in the NEWS PAPER is about the worst thing anyone could do!! The fool who made that happen just made it's chances of making it back to the tundra in spring go from 70% to 25% !!!!!

I hope the newspaper understands their mistake somehow.

[mjs1973]

I was hoping the paper would post the article online so I could send you a link, but no such luck. They did put in some common sense guildlines in the story, telling people to keep their distance, and give it it's space. But you know not everyone will respect that. In fact, I read on local birding forum that it was sitting on the ground in a field, and someone tried to walk up to it. Very frustrating. I'm just happy that I got the chance to see it before the mass of people scare it away, or kill it somehow.

There are some other in the area that weren't mentioned in the article, so hopefully I can get a chance to find them before they head back home.

On a side note, there was a Snowy in this EXACT same location last year too. They don't think it's the same one, but it's interesting that another bird would come to the exact same location.

[Lava Lamp]

I only saw this for a moment through some really thick scrub, but I think I know what it is. Does anyone else?

[Lava Lamp]

We've had some of these in the bird ID threads, but I kinda liked it. Does anyone know what the bird is about to do?

[Lava Lamp]

These buggers are hard to catch standing still, even for a moment...

[paulnj]

1... ROBIN
2.. Osprey about to crap
3. yellow rumped warbler

[dadas115]

Here are a couple for you:

Greg

[dadas115]

And one more

[Knight]

dadas115 good captures

[paulnj]

Here are a couple for you:

Greg

These 2 are quite hard ID's as I am sure you know

I will go with Bell's vireo over Warbling vireo due to the appearance of it having a broken eyering. I have only seen one Bell's in my life though.

I am also going to say female hooded oriole over female orchard due to the paleness to the back and the dull wing bars.

Your rednaped sapsucker was easy though.

These are some great images too!

[dadas115]

Paul,

Those are pretty good guesses, especially since you didn’t know when or where they photos were taken or get to see the bird’s activity. The first one is a Philadelphia verio (the local experts agreed on this ID). The bird was seen near Galveston, TX during spring migration. The second bird is a juv. Northern oriole near Freeport, TX taken during fall migration. The last one is a real tricky one. My initial guess was also red-naped sapsucker and I am pretty sure he has some red-naped in him but probably a couple of generations ago. This bird was photographed in Big Bend National Park where the two species overlap and interbreed. The local experts pointed out that the pure red-naped SS’s have a slightly different pattern on their back and generally have a stronger red patch on the neck.

I think you did really well considering that these were all some really bad curve-balls.

Greg

[paulnj]

Vireos (well rarer ones) are not my forte at all, but after actually pulling out a book(I ID 95% of the time without visual aids), I can see that the undertail coverts are unlike any Bell's ;)

That SS has red on the back of it's head , but I agree the amount of red is lacking.

I am not trying to say your wrong, but I just can't make that oriole into a baltimore/ northern oriole! It looks hooded/orchard like to me in so many ways, and I have seen tons of northern and orchard orioles!

No need to debate ID though ;)

[dadas115]

Paul,

I wanted to make that sapsucker into a red-naped so bad it wasn’t even funny but after showing this picture and several others to some woodpecker experts I was finally convinced that it was a yellow-bellied.

On the oriole, if it had been a hooded it would have been a very big deal indeed as they are extremely rare in the area where this photo was taken. Orchards are found in this area but the timing is not right. Again, this was a tough ID, however myself and the people who were with me had the benefit of seeing that not only was he in with a flock of Northern’s, he also made the northern oriole call. This oriole was observed at length by several of the top birders in the Houston area who agreed that it was a northern, though these were some of the same folks that mis-IDed the streak-backed oriole last year so anything is possible. The call was pretty convincing though.

Greg

[dadas115]

Here’s one more ID challenge

As you can probably guess I drive my friends nuts with these things .

Greg

[paulnj]

This to me looks like a hermit thrush, but The angle isn't the greatest for ID and I can't see the tail. I will be the first to admit that thrushes are not my thing, but I can get an ID by ear usually on the rarities(grey cheek/bicknells, swainson's).

A friend gave me a copy of a great thrush CD that includes nocturnal flight calls too ;) Birding by ear is my forte' for sure!

[dadas115]

Paul,

You are correct on this one though it is a tough ID without seeing more of the tail. Hearing the calls is certainly a huge help on ID's much of the time.

Greg

[Knight]

Cardinal from behind a house window and snowing . ( Well at least he does not fly away when i go to the window to look at him now lol ) I will get a good picture of him before winter is over hehe

[paulnj]

There you go! I finally made time for a birding trip last week and spent 30 minutes in a blind waiting for a pair of cardinals to come out from indide a thicket.

NO SUCH LUCK!

[Lava Lamp]

I saw a pair of cardinals today, too. But no luck with a pic. Got this one instead.

[Lava Lamp]

Not much of a picture, but goes with the other woodpecker (and also photographed today.)