This quiz groups some relatively long and narrow wings. Pay special attention to subtle differences in shape, and bold white patterns. With thanks to the online wing collection of the Slater Museum of Natural History, University of Puget Sound for allowing the use of these photos.
Here is a quiz with three very different wings, and a detailed explanation follows (don’t peek). With thanks to the online wing collection of the Slater Museum of Natural History, University of Puget Sound for allowing the use of these photos.
This quiz shows just parts of three different blue birds. Try to identify the species while seeing only part of the body. With thanks, again, to Brian E. Small for providing the beautiful photos. You can see lots more at his website, and clicking any photo links there as well.
I’ll be away in Belize for the next week or so, leading a trip for Mass Audubon, and in anticipation of that I’ve posted a photo of one of the most iconic birds of Belize, taken on my last trip there in 2009.
Here’s a new variation for an ID quiz. Birds in these photos are mostly masked by black. See if you can identify the species without seeing the whole bird. With thanks, again, to Brian E. Small for providing the beautiful photos. You can see lots more at his website, and clicking any photo links there as …
Wings are amazing. Marvels of engineering, with intricate and changeable color patterns, they offer endless avenues for study. But seeing the details of a wing in the field can be extremely difficult. Feathers are constantly shifting across each other, the wings are moving up and down, in and out, and the bird is usually traveling …
Below is a chance to test your knowledge of bird size, by selecting the heavier species in each of five pairs of birds. Weight, or apparent bulk, is one of the key factors in our impressions of overall size, and it’s helpful to think about it explicitly. Watch the birds at your bird feeder or …
Here’s the next installment in quizzes. I’ve removed the titles this time so hovering over the image shouldn’t give it away (but some browsers will still show the file name, try to ignore those and in the future I’ll use random file names). For those of you seeing this in Google Reader, I understand that …
Identify the species shown in each photo by clicking the multiple choice answers. I hope to make short quizzes like this a regular feature of this website, so please leave feedback on what you like or dislike about it. Thanks!