Song Sleuth main page Song Sleuth is a new bird song identification app, created by Wildlife Acoustics. Watch the detailed walk-through video You can find the app now in the iTunes app store. The Song Sleuth app can be very accurate, but it is also easily confused by extraneous sounds, and that can lead […]
Song Sleuth tips – How to crop a recording Read More »
In early December 2016, David Pierce of Wildwood, Missouri, noticed an odd woodpecker at his feeder and took some really nice photos. I always marvel at the path these kinds of stories follow: Dave had to be looking carefully enough to notice the slight differences in this bird, make the effort to take some good
A melanistic Downy Woodpecker Read More »
I wrote about white Great Blue Herons in 2007, and thanks to a recent comment there by David Ammerman alerting me to a whitish Great Blue Heron chick in a nest, I made the short trip to Bolton, MA yesterday (July 7, 2016). It was not hard to find the nest, and I was able
A white Great Blue Heron in Massachusetts Read More »
This beautiful and striking bird is a partial albino Northern Flicker, photographed in Massachusetts in Sep 2015 by Michael Beagan. A second, very similar, bird had been photographed nearby in 2012 by John Harrison, and – besides being very attractive birds – the two provide a good opportunity to discuss some of the details
If you keep up on the news of subspecies, you will have heard of Scopoli’s Shearwater. It’s the Mediterranean breeding population of Cory’s Shearwater, overlapping very little with populations nesting on Atlantic Islands, and many authorities have split the two into separate species recently. Both populations occur off the Atlantic coast of North America, although Cory’s in
Underwing pattern in Cory’s Shearwater Read More »
This image is for sale in an auction here Identification of downy young sandpipers can be a real challenge in the arctic, where multiple species occur, but I saw and sketched this one on Great Gull Island, New York, last weekend. At that latitude only a few other species are possible, and most are easily eliminated
A very young sandpiper Read More »
The artwork shown here is available for sale, click here to view current auctions Birds are busy this time of year, trying to raise a family (or two or three) and then get ready for fall migration, and it all goes so fast. The young birds are full-grown just a few weeks after they hatch,
‘Tis the season for baby birds Read More »
On my usual birding circuit on the morning of 26 May 2015, along the Assabet River in Concord, MA, I heard the distinctive song of a Mourning Warbler. This species is a rare but regular migrant through the area, so finding one is a highlight any day, and I set to work to try to
An interesting warbler Read More »
The Eastern and Western subspecies of Willet are often mentioned as likely candidates for splitting into two species. They differ in size, proportions, details of plumage, migration pattern, and have no overlap in breeding range and very little in winter range. There is a lot of good information in print about how to identify them
Comparing the songs of Willet subspecies Read More »
Cackling Goose is a rare fall migrant through Massachusetts and I usually see a couple of them each fall among the hundreds of Canada Geese around Concord. I look forward to the challenge of sorting through the flocks and picking these birds out, and once a candidate is located the identification has usually been straightforward –
Cackling-ish Geese Read More »