Me when a bird surprises me by posing prominently nearby and I find when I look at the photos that it was a BABY with a gape flange: "Get back into cover! Don't you birds learn STRANGER DANGER!? I'm a large mammal!"
(Common yellowthroat, Fanno Creek watershed, Oregon)
Is it silly that I’m wearing fingerless gloves over sun-sleeves that come down over my palms? Or is it silly that most people aren’t utilizing their gauntlet OR vambrace slots?
Drama at the marsh: who invited an osprey to the kingfishers’ party?!
When the beat drops in the Marriage of Figaro Overture 😎😎😎💃🏻
Me: Alma, it’s really a problem that your hair is so fine that 75% of the brushes and gloves I’ve tried won’t grab it, you won’t tolerate the efficient ones, and the few others that do work are no more effective than me gently pinching out loose hairs while I pet you.
Alma, luxuriating under the pinch-petting treatment: Nope! Not a problem!
My favorite bird-subtype reference guide, which I use when assuring myself of an iNat identification or looking for info on behavior and nesting, is the Peterson Ref. Guide to Woodpeckers of North America by Stephen Shunk.
CON:
-Out of print. (Sorry!)
PRO:
-The deep knowledge!
-Doesn't shy away from confusing info, so best reference on sapsucker hybridization I've seen, e.g.
-good selection of beautiful photos of adults and juveniles for most taxa I've read thus far
RE: https://pie.gd/@faerye/116999993408579225
Fellow fedizen-naturalists, let's crowdsource some book recommendations!
I suggest we use the tag #FavFieldGuide but I very much want to hear your recs for at-home reference guides too!
For general birding purposes, I like Sibley Birds West! PROS:
-More portable than the full North America
-Usually includes juvenile plumages
-Illustrated of course with lovely drawings (which are often more clear for identification than photos.)
Choosing field or reference guides for animals can be very frustrating. There often aren't many reviews, and while it seems like it should be easy to choose a volume one relies upon and simply look up another in that series, one finds either:
A. There isn't a comprehensive series of this particular reference guide, and nothing for the taxon desired;
B. There are overlapping guides from the same publisher by different authors and one can't figure out which would be better. 🤷🏻♀️
I would be pleased that apparently I've successfully helped my technophobic mom feel confident buying prints of my bird photos off #SmugMug, except that now when I show her a fresh bird photo she likes, she says "Post it for purchase!" I've already got such a photo backlog, and now I literally have my mom nagging me to do my 'homework'!
(Including red-shouldered hawk photo she said this about as Bird Tax.)
Huh. The tumblr algorithm has decided I should learn Gaelic. I mean, I’ve got nothing against Gaelic, but I think I’ll stick to learning Welsh; especially as I’ve seen from the proficient Gaelic-speakers we had in my intro Welsh class decades ago that those particular false friends can REALLY confuse you!
I feel like by photographing this water strider on the lazy creek the other day, l accidentally made it into a constellation or perhaps banished it to the Phantom Zone.
CN: close-up of bug
My cat always hisses at me or my spouse when she sees us outside. Just now I tarried to try to convince her; and when I slow-blinked at her, she WHIRLED and put the curtain between us.
“Can you IMAGINE? The foul doppelgänger that roams outside these walls tried to tell me it LOVES me?!” she seemed to say, and required some consolatory pets when I hurried inside.
My sibling, working an outdoor gig, sent me a vague complaint text with a picture that took a while to load.
Which is why when it finally loaded and was a screenshot of the ABYSMAL air quality there, I startled as if it was a jump-scare in a movie! 😱😱😱 #MaskUp
Sometimes I wonder if I’m wronging Mastodon by putting my silliest posts on tumblr instead. For instance, I am reading 1872 vampire novella “Carmilla”, and these are my thoughts:
(Lisa Simpson voice:) “Why can Carmilla walk around in the daytime, if she’s a vampire?”
(Very ‘I’m not Xena, I’m Lucy Lawless’ voice:) “Carmilla is also a lesbian, and lesbians are daywalkers.”
As we come up on our kitties’ second birthday (observed), I once again cast my eye back to see how much they’ve changed. For instance, here they are on Sunday, and exactly one year earlier. So startling!
My brain when I am wearing a mask for smoke/air quality reasons and walk into an air-conditioned store: Hey, that was a threshold! Aren’t we supposed to toggle mask status on thresholds? 🤓
Me: NO! We are not flipping mask-toggling protocol! We are going all-mask-all-the-time! INITIATE FULL QUARIAN MODE! 😷
Are These Young Folks Today taught what the word ‘solicitors’ means?
I was reading t’other day about the legacy of poor reading skills from “whole language” teaching in US schools (which hasn’t been at all extirpated as yet), so I suppose it’s possible they’re not even reading “no solicitors”, but guessing at what long word starting with S that might be. “No sailboats,” perhaps they think it says. “No skateboarding.” “No superpowers.”
Accidentally ending up on the Letterboxd web interface and wandering around as if I’m in a bad dream where my childhood home has changed shape. 😱
“Really good actors should not be allowed to drive cars.” —Sally Field, on early deaths of promising actors, interview on Criterion Collection blu-ray of Hud (1963)
First this scruffy teen white-breasted nuthatch foraged food from the sapsucker’s sap wells while the sapsucker was ON the tree, and then it photobombed the sapsucker’s portrait session!? Young birds these days! :sapsucker:
(From Friday)
#birdPhotography #WildForWoodpeckers #Oregon #birding
