GracesWarbler

Lots of yellow flowers are in bloom here, so I went out looking for birds. Here's a Lesser Goldfinch.

Sorry, I posted this in the wrong subforum. Please ignore.

Hi folks. Here's a bird I saw on the morning of August 14th in northern Arizona, near Flagstaff, perching on a sunflower by a pond. The bird sat there for a half a minute while I took pictures. I think I have it narrowed down to a Cassin's Kingbird or a Western Kingbird. I looked at recent ebird activity at this location and someone reported one of each bird, so while that helped narrow things down, it wasn't definitive. The white throat makes me think Cassin's, but my bird book mentions that it should have a little white at the end of the tail, which I'm unsure about. (And I've now read "Tips for New Birders" (https://forums.whatbird.com/index.php?/topic/20402-tips-for-new-birders/), so thanks for the poster who suggested that in the last thread!)

Hi folks. Here's a bird I saw on the morning of August 14th in northern Arizona, near Flagstaff, perching on a sunflower by a pond. The bird sat there for a half a minute while I took pictures. I think I have it narrowed down to a Cassin's Kingbird or a Western Kingbird. I looked at recent ebird activity at this location and someone reported one of each bird, so while that helped narrow things down, it wasn't definitive. The white throat makes me think Cassin's, but my bird book mentions that it should have a little white at the end of the tail, which I'm unsure about. (And I've now read "Tips for New Birders" (https://forums.whatbird.com/index.php?/topic/20402-tips-for-new-birders/), so thanks for the poster who suggested that in the last thread!)

Thanks for the tips, everyone! I'll give them a try the next time I need to identify a bird. After looking through the Flycatchers in my bird book and not finding a good match, I should have tried similar types of little birds. Thanks again!

I took this photo in northern Arizona, near Flagstaff, on the morning of August 14. This little bird was in the sunflowers near some small ponds. Is it a Flycatcher or something else? In general, do you have any tips for identifying birds? I'm a little colorblind, so I don't think that subtle color difference will help. Should I try to make note of birdsong, behavior, size, or something else like that when I'm out birding? Sometimes these little birds are quite fast, so they're difficult to observe. Thanks!

This is fantastic! How close did you get?

Sunflowers are in bloom here, so I went out to photograph birds in the flowers. Birds are fast, so this was tricky!

Birds have lots of cool details: interesting feathers, beaks, eyes, feet, wings, etc. I'm always pleased when I can get good enough photos to see these things clearly. This is the place to share your photos of bird details. Feel free to mention cool details along with you photos. Also, if you have photos of the same feature across several different species (e.g. crow vs raven beaks, claws of different birds of prey, etc.), that would be cool too. I'll start. Here are photos of the brightly-colored tail feathers of a Rosy-faced Lovebird (which live in the wild in Phoenix, AZ), the webbed feet of a Neotropic Cormorant (which must be good for swimming), and the red feathers of a Red-Winged Blackbird (which they often show off during their mating calls), and a profile of a Common Raven (this individual has tiny white feathers above one eye). So what cool details have you all seen?

I like to write! In my job, I do research about the climate system, but in my free time I write weather-themed mystery books. My goal is to get people more interested in weather and science. Here's my latest one: https://www.weatherdetectives.org/the-weather-detectives

Earlier this year, I occasionally noticed a Dark-eyed Junco when leaving my apartment. It turns out it made a nest in my neighbor's decorative door wreath. Here's two of it's chicks (there had been a third, but I'm not sure what happened to it; maybe it already left the nest). The chicks left the nest a while back, but recently I've noticed a Junco nesting there again. I haven't checked the nest for any eggs, since I don't want to disturb it, but a quick search suggests that Juncos can lay eggs multiple times a year. Is the new bird likely to be one of the same birds as before, laying new eggs? Or a completely different bird?

A Neotropic Cormorant. Big water birds are the best.

This isn't for the challenge, but I wanted to share it somewhere. I made a coloring book page of some Pymgy Nuthatches that I photographed!

A Great Egret. This one walked pretty close to me and snatched a dragonfly off of a plant.

Here's a Common Raven. It has tiny white feathers over its eye. Anybody know what causes feathers like that?