cvanbosk

Crow is the only thing I can think of.

Amazing photos!

Least is correct. The yellow legs and, for me, the short bill are good marks.

Looks like an Eastern Phoebe, but would like to know location.

I’m an expert at distinguishing the yellowlegs species when I see one of each standing next to each other.

What about the third photo?

Could the yellowlegs in the third photo be a greater?

Just a note. There is a bluejay in my neighborhood that does a PERFECT red-shouldered hawk imitation. When I finally caught a visual of him doing it, it has made me question my audible r-s hawk ids since.

It's so short, I'm not sure what I'm listening for. I feel like I might be hearing frogs.

Also yes for Wilson's Snipe.

Yep! Those streaks down the back are notable.

Thanks everybody. Barred Owl makes sense. I've seen The Corvid-19 harassing them before back in there. And even though Barred Owls aren't supposed to be crow predators, perhaps one had just finally had enough of those crows and took the head off of one out of frustration.

Yep. Unmistakable.

The large family of American Crows that lives around my house (I call them The Corvid-19) lost one of its members this morning in my backyard. The group was making a horrific racket and mobbing a large bird. I just caught a brief glimpse of the offender as it flew off through the woods. I believe it was on owl, but not entirely certain. However, the culprit left behind these two feathers. Can anyone help me with the ID? (PS. The group is still out there squawking incessantly around the headless corpse of their fallen comrade in the middle of my lawn. They are mourning for sure. Kind of sad really.)

Local expert and ebird reviewer weighed in. It's a Barred Owl.

Yeah. I wish I could get those Parulas to pipe down sometimes. I will try to get a better recording.

It’s there. You have to turn the volume way up.

In the clip, you can hear the call at about 0:03, 0:13 and 0:24. It's a distant, faint "hoot" or "coo". Sounds a bit like a dove, but not quite. Any ideas? hoot2_1_1.mp3

1. Wilson's. Yes. 2. Pass.

Thanks for the leads, Kevin. Reading through the reviews, I’m not really finding anything of very high quality. Have any of the experienced birders here ever used anything like these?

This may be a silly question but ... is there such a thing as a decent pair of binoculars that comes equipped with a built in camera? I find it so frustrating when I'm looking at an unknown bird with the binos and then I try to switch to the camera to get a couple shots. Usually the bird has moved, or I can't find it on the camera's viewfinder, or my Nikon POS decides to focus on everything BUT the bird. What I want is to be able to push a button on my binos that will just take a half-way decent picture of what I'm looking at, at the moment I'm looking at it. I don't need National Geographic quality photos, just photos good enough to look at later for identification purposes (and hopefully good enough to satisfy the Ebird Overloards). It seems like that in this day and age, with optics and tiny cell phone cameras being what they are, there should be such a product.

Not sanderlings? Okay, I quit birding.

Oh yeah! Got a lifer (Horned Grebe).