To refresh your memory, here is the photo from May’s Bird Quiz. The bird was seen in Colorado during the month of May. Don’t read any further if you want one last chance to identify this bird.
Category: Vertebrates
What Made These Holes?
Do your lilacs look like someone took a giant hole punch to their leaves? How about your rosebushes (left), green ash, or Virginia creeper? The first time I saw the precise circle of leaf missing from a leaf, I thought someone was playing a trick on me. It didn’t look at all like insect damage.
May’s Bird Quiz
Can you identify this bird? The photo was taken in Colorado during the month of May. The answer will appear next week.
For answers to last week’s “Do You Speak Twitcher?—The Sequel”, keep reading….
Do You Speak “Twitcher”?—The Sequel
Remember that little quiz I posted a while back? The one asking you to define a list of British birding terms? Well, I have ten more words or phrases that are equally incomprehensible to North American birders. Can you figure out what these mean? Answers will appear next week (below the bird quiz).
- Old duffer
- On the deck
- Patch
- Phase
- Plastic
- Scorch
- Stringy
- Tart
- UTV’s
- Yank
Bird Photography: Keep It Simple, Sweetie
You’re out birding and you see an adorable Mountain Chickadee, busily working over the scrub oak branch looking for a snack. Happily, you’ve got your camera, so you grab a few quick shots. But when you get home and enlarge them on your computer screen, you’re disappointed. The bird is cute, but it’s surrounded by brushy twigs and dead leaves.
As I scroll through photo after photo on my various Facebook photography sites, I’m struck by the stark disparity between the experienced photographers and the obvious beginners. There’s nothing wrong with being a beginner—we all had to start there—but there is a problem if you stay a beginner year after year.
April Quiz: Answer
To refresh your memory, here is the photo from April’s Bird Quiz. The bird was seen in Arizona during the month of April. Don’t read any further if you want one last chance to identify this bird.
April’s Bird Quiz
Can you identify this bird? The photo was taken in Arizona during the month of April. The answer will appear next week.
Auto-corrected Bird List
Today I have a special guest post from Heidi Eaton, naturalist, zookeeper, and all around very nice person. She’s married to “Bug Eric” of entomology fame. You may remember I recommended his insect blog a while back. Here’s her post. I’m sure you’ll laugh at least as much as I did!
I’ve often used my Samsung tablet to keep a bird list when Eric and I are traveling. We are often amused at the way the auto-correct tries to change the bird names. Some aren’t that funny, like it always wants heron, blackbird, and starling to be plural (I can kind of understand why, with blackbirds and starlings).
Bird Photography: Use your birding skills!
As birders, we have an advantage over other photographers wishing to photograph birds. We know our subjects. All those skills we’ve garnered in our years of stalking lifers and observing birdy behavior are about to pay off—big time!.
Finding birds is easier for us birders. We know where the hotspots are. (If in doubt, check out the field trip destinations from any birding club website.) For example, Colorado birders know that Mt. Evans and Guanella Pass are often productive places to search for ptarmigan, while Clark’s Nutcrackers and Gray Jays can almost always be found at the Rainbow Curve pull-out in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Spring Cleaning is for the Birds
We’re approaching one of my favorite times of year. It’s bluebird season! We currently have five bluebird boxes on our property. Last year, one was filled with bluebirds and the others were claimed by wrens, swallows, and other cavity nesters.
Now, as a responsible home owner, it’s time to clean them all out. House Wrens typically clean out their own boxes, but bluebirds depend on the landlord to take care of it. That means us. And it’s critical that the box get cleaned before the birds arrive and start to move in. That means now!
Mountain Plover 