In a previous post I’ve talked about Trumpeter Swans with yellow bill spots as a source of confusion with Tundra Swan. I speculated that the yellow spots might be showing because the birds are leucistic (lacking melanin). The responses to that post are worthy of a follow-up. Harry Lumsden, who has studied the reintroduced Trumpeter […]
Trumpeter Swans, yellow bill spots, and leucism Read More »
One of the well-defined groups of feathers on the underside of a bird is what we call the breast. In reality, on songbirds these feathers grow from the front of the neck, extending down so that the tips of the feathers (which is all we can see) cover the foreparts of the body – the
Introduction to breast feathers Read More »
I’m happy to report some news about the Sibley eGuide to birds: The price of the app in all versions has been reduced 30% to $19.99, and a new Lite version for iPhone and iPad is available for free at iTunes. This is a fully functional version of the app that includes only 30 species.
News about the eGuide to Birds Read More »
In previous posts here I’ve asked “How many rare birds do we miss?” and the related question “How many rare birds do we find?” Several recent rare bird discoveries provide a good chance to revisit these questions. Consider these recent discoveries:
Rare birds “under the radar” Read More »
I’ll be at MassAudubon’s annual Birders Meeting next Saturday, March 3rd, in Waltham, Massachusetts. Directions and more info is here. The theme is seabirds, and there is a great lineup of presentations by such luminaries as Debi Shearwater and Dr. Steven Kress. When you’re not engrossed in the presentations, you can find me at a table
Upcoming event: March 3rd in Massachusetts Read More »
The other morning I was passing a farm field near my house. It’s a place where I often go birding and as I glanced around I was thinking “maybe there could be a Rough-legged Hawk today”. But I’ve never seen a Rough-legged Hawk here in 12 years in the neighborhood, and all I could see
Rough-legged vs. Red-tailed? Read More »
Yesterday I painted a Northern Saw-whet Owl of the very distinctive Queen Charlotte Islands subspecies A. a. brooksi, which was inexplicably left out of the first edition of the Sibley Guide. I’ll post more details about the status and identification of this subspecies here soon. Today I’m just posting photos that I took showing the
Painting a Saw-whet Owl Read More »
A recent discussion about geographic variation in Herring Gulls (on the ID-Frontiers listserve) prompted me to go back and scan some photos I took in 1998 at Cape May. At the time I was sorting out what seemed to be two populations of Herring Gulls, identifiable in their first winter by plumage and shape. There
Variation in immature American Herring Gulls Read More »
As I work on the revision of my field guide I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how the book can assist the process of identification, and what information is most useful to a birder in the field. I’ve settled on the idea that there are two stages of bird identification, each one requiring
The two stages of field identification Read More »
Thanks to reader Anne DuPont for sending in these photos of a pair of Great Blue Herons at Wakodahatchee Wetlands, Delray Beach, Florida. It’s clearly a mated pair, but the female (sexed by behavior) has more white on the head and fore neck, paler legs and bill, white head plumes, paler rust color on the
A Wurdemann’s-like heron from South Florida Read More »