Aaron

Magnificent frigatebird should be fairly easy anywhere along the coast. You could take a trip to the beach which would keep your family occupied and happy and just keep an eye on the sky. Prepare for a rather lacklustre encounter though, they’ll most likely be way up soaring. There’s a few others threads (if you haven’t read them all ready) of trip reports to the Everglades:

Yup, long-haired miniature dachshund. She turned 12 in October

Do people here actually say “American” before robin and crow? Honestly, I use a shortened version 90% of the time…. At least for the common type of birds with the same last name. A boreal chickadee is never just a chickadee, but a black-capped chickadee sure is.

Snow and cold? Dunno what you’re talking about….

Well….

A ton of people here contributed to the GBBC, lots of names I’ve never seen before on eBird. Made for quite a few interesting lists and reports…. Rock Pigeon vs Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) got quite a few people. I ended with 13 as I had some juncos show up this morning.

House finches and chickadees have been singing for a week or two now. Woodpeckers have started drumming, but not really that common yet. Magpies have been doing their weird mating rituals for a few weeks as well. No migrants yet, and all of our winter species are still here. Typically our first gulls come at the end of February so they could show up any day this week, but the temperature is taking a nose dive after tomorrow so might not get anything until March.

I’m at 12 species and I was planning to do my main bird outings tomorrow, but now we’re in the middle of a snowfall warning so doubt I’ll be heading out. So I’ll probably stay at 12 unless something shows up in my yard. Did a quick drive by today to see if I could spot the hawk owl again and found him perched on a spruce, so he’s once again my best bird. Even though I’ve seen him 3 times now (never gets old). Definitely missing the hordes of redpolls I had at this time last year. Still missing them from my year list.

Had fun watching three horned grebes hunt for fish the other day. One caught quite a big one, but decided to eat it as far away as possible from me. https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/535939761

Tiny goldeneye in a big lake

@DLecy They always upload photos with an explanation. They’re sometimes obvious misidentifications and other times they’re vague photos that maybe could be interpreted as the rare bird (ignoring the location and likelihood) but not enough proof to differentiate from the similar looking common species. They’re not an amateur by any means, but they typically report something crazy every couple months and this has been ongoing for a few years. However, as Liam mentioned, they’re most definitely one of the people that just think their ID is correct. The recent reports that I remember are gray heron, gilded flicker, and spotted redshank…..in Western Canada. All within the last year. @Birds are coolI forgot about that! However, their confirmed reports still get sent through the alert.

A quick trip to my cabin shot me up to 59. This is actually the best February I’ve ever had, but that was a pretty low bar to cross. Hoping to head out a few times during the GBBC, but there’s definitely slim pickings now…

I was curious why one individual had rare birds showing up beside them in the top 100 despite never receiving an email notification in the daily alert. Guess they were shadow banned. Their normal species/lists/photos still show up publicly, but there’s almost no way to find their reported rare birds (talking megas here) even if you search up their name in media and select unconfirmed. Only way to view those species/photos is if you find the checklist that they reported it on.

It would be nice to finally give Canada a true endemic by splitting off the Haida Gwaii subspecies of NSWO. There’s actually a few subspecies of birds that are only found on those islands that probably could reach full species status at some point.

I’m sure highly rated photos do get hit by 1s by a handful of people every now and then (for the reasons discussed in other threads), but since eBird doesn’t show the distribution of ratings, it’s all hypothetical. I’ve had a few photos and audio rated 1-2 stars that obviously aren’t that low of quality, but I only know that since it’s the only rating. But I’ve also had 2-3 star media get rated as 4s or 5s. So it goes both ways. 🤷🏻‍♂️