spring 2013 bird ID thread

[paulnj]

yellow rumped warbler and yellow warbler... spring has arrived

[billy320]

I took this in Arches National PArk in Utah in 2010. I was going thru my bird pics and I never got it ID'd

016 by Billy320, on Flickr

[paulnj]

looks to be a western race of house wren.

[wfooshee]

Not much to go on, a horrible picture, I know, but the best in the sequence that I got. (I was just getting there, unpacking the camera, looking around, and this guy shot by across the marsh. I just raised the camera and shot, hadn't even checked the setting yet.)

Turns out I was at 1/160th, not much use on a 300mm lens! (But it gave me an f:29 aperture!) Click for a bigger pic, which is a 1-to-1 crop of the frame, which shows how far away he'd gotten by the time I got the camera up. Anyway, I have a thought, but would like the collective to chime in for me.

[paulnj]

you did well at those settings. blue winged teal.

[wfooshee]

Thanks. Confirmed what I got. Black bill, white on the face behind it, stripe on the head through the eye. This was #8 in an 8-shot sequence. Basically the last shot before the buffer filled up and the camera stopped clicking. All the rest have a vague shape that looks like a head and some wings.

I think this is the first duck I've seen over this marsh. The place is jammed with herons, egrets, crows, red-winged blackbirds, etc., but the ducks are usually on the other side of the park around open water.