My Best Lousy But Identifiable Photos (also: open offer to try to ID your North American birds)

Mar 13, 2022 6:25 PM

Fishkeeper

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I have a good bird guide that covers every bird in the continental US, including rare vagrants and common cage bird escapes. Got a bird photo you want identified? Send it to me, and I'll see what I can do. I can also try to work with descriptions, but probably can't do much. I need your approximate location (just what state you're in is fine) to help double-check IDs, and what time of year you saw the bird is also helpful. If you have some general idea of size, that's particularly helpful, but bear in mind that size is difficult to judge at a distance.
I have a fondness for bird photos that are technically pretty terrible, but are still identifiable. Here's some of mine.
IDs for these birds will be at the bottom of the post.
Pic one: background, blurry fellow slightly upward of center.

Pic two: blurry as hell.

Pic three: also blurry, but shows the orange feet quite well. Hadn't noticed before this pic that they have those.

Pic four: top left, almost out of frame.

Pic five: one medium-small bird and two tiny birds on the left, two medium-small birds in the center. Far away and in dim light.

Pic six: look slightly to the right of that lamppost sticking up, about 1/6 of the way down from the dock supports. Moving boat, moving waves, tiny ducks at a distance.

Here's a heavily cropped version of pic six. They're much more identifiable here.
Pic one is a male Common Yellowthroat. The face is distinctive.
Pic two is a male Ruby-crowned Kinglet, bouncing around at top speed and showing its crown to an intruder.
Pic three is another Ruby-crowned Kinglet, hovering.
Pic four is a Yellow-throated Warbler.
Pic five is a Kildeer on the left, two Wilson's Snipe in the center. The two tiny birds by the Kildeer aren't identifiable at this distance; they're one of the "peep" sandpipers, three(ish) different species of sandpiper that are difficult to distinguish even with good photos. Least Sandpipers are most common, so they're most likely, but it's bad form to ID a bird to species based entirely on which is most common in the area.
Pic six is two male Bufflehead ducks, and a female (the black dot) nearly obscured. She was probably mid-dive. These are a diving species, and a pain in the butt to photograph even in good conditions. Unless they're sitting and preening, they spend more time underwater than on the surface. These were all the birds visible from a flock of about 10.

birdwatching

birding

I like this game! I got all but the warbler. Thanks for sharing.

3 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

*yellow-throated warbler

3 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Nice! Funny story about that photo: I deleted it because I thought I had missed the bird, registered the bird in the top left corner right

3 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

as I hit the button, and had to go download a program and learn how to recover deleted photos to get it back. That's my only photo of one.

3 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

I'm a lot more careful to check photos before deleting now.

3 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0