lonestranger

I'm far from confident and have zero experience with them, but that bill looks short enough for one of the night herons. Is that a possibility?

I guess more than anything, I want what I know I can't have, the old community that enjoyed the old website before the first major crash. The community/members is what has always made this website great, but since the crash we seem to have lost the interest of many of our members. The old forums use to have places for birders to get together and discuss non-birding topics, and get to know each other a little better. There were forums where the young birders could be kids and have fun that wasn't restricted to just talking about birds. People used to create simple games that many of the members would participate in just for the fun of it, and there were many of those games going on before the crash. There were forums to share photos of the stuff that kept us amused when there were no birds around. Those forums or sub-forums weren't always here though, they were added to the website at the request of the members and many of them became quite popular and I suspect a few even attracted new members. The other wildlife forums weren't added as ID forums, they were added so that people could share their experiences with the rest of the community. Any IDing that was done in the wildlife forums was voluntary but because the community was always willing to share their knowledge where and when they could, and there's a lot of collective knowledge in the minds of our community, those wildlife forums had an almost natural transition into informal ID forums. The members of our community may not have built the old website but the members of our community ARE what made the old website what it was, and that was not just a great educational site, but also a fun place to be. The WhatBird community is as diverse as the birds at the root of our mutual enjoyment, and just like the birds, some members will leave the area and never come back. I guess I am just hoping that some of the members can be enticed to come back. We all know that birds can be attracted to our yards by putting out a feeder full of sunflower seeds. We also know that putting a variety of feeders out with different seeds will attract more, and a wider variety of birds. We also know that putting out specialized feeders like hummingbird feeders and suet cages can attract specialized birds like hummers and woodpeckers. We also know that adding a bird bath or water attraction will attract more birds than just putting out seed or specialized feeders. If we remove all our feeders and bird baths from our yard, what do you think will happen to the birds that used to enjoy our yard? They might come back for a while looking for what was once there, but if they don't find what they're looking for, they're quite possibly going to stop looking in our yard altogether. I for one prefer to keep our yard as bird friendly as possible by adding attractions, not by removing them. That's just this birder's spin on things.

@Administrator, use the poll results as you see fit. Here's hoping. 🤞

Bumping this to keep the poll on the first page for a few days.

I think you'll find the discussion I linked to expands on the idea with explanations/arguments for both sides. Compared to the old forums, the new forums fall short in many ways and requests for more variety in forums keeps coming up over and over again, mostly from people that remember how the old forums used to be. It's my opinion that Whatbird is a fraction of what it used to be before the crash, and I admit to being disappointed with that.

Straight forward question that relates to the discussion in this thread.

Watch for them getting drunk when they're gorging on the berries/fruit. Waxwing will indulge on berries and fruit that is naturally fermenting and if they indulge a little too much they supposedly get drunk. I've never seen it myself but it sounds like it'd be fun to watch.

The photos load right in the post for me. If you haven't already, try refreshing your browser, that usually works for me.

Besides the features that The Bird Nuts mentioned, you can also see that the legs are feathered right down to the toes, which also supports rough-legged hawk.

I think the white patch is just the wind blowing the feathers around enough that you see the finer feathers underneath showing through. I have a similar shot of a red-tailed hawk with it's head turned showing a white patch like yours. I see a pattern in mine that looks like an arctic fox to me. Back-headed Hawk by lonestranger102, on Flickr

The link worked for me, here's the photo it took me to.

This looks like a Red-tailed hawk to me. The tail has thin strips where a Cooper's hawk would have much wider stripes, on a longer tail.

Whatbird has a very limited amount of photo storage, @NorEastBirder. Photos uploaded to the Gallery have to be less than 31mb, which may be part of your problem, plus there is very low limit on the total storage space. Most of us use a third party website such as imgur, flickr, etc., for photo storage and then link/embed our photos in our posts here. Not many people actually use the photo gallery so not many of us can offer advise on how to best make use of it.

This is a Northern Flicker, a type of woodpecker that usually eats ants on the ground instead of pecking for food in the trees like most other woodpeckers. A better name would be, White-rumped groundpecker because that's usually how they're viewed, head down pecking the ground with it's white rump up in the air.

No worries, @Lisaaaaa38. I just posted so that people respond to just one post. It helps avoid confusion by keeping the discussion focused in one spot. With three separate posts, it's possible to get 3 different suggestions for the same bird, leading to three separate discussions/debates about the identifying markers used to validate the ID. One post just keeps things simpler.

This is a duplicate/triplicate of yesterday's bird, which has already been ID'd.

This is a duplicate/triplicate post of yesterday's bird, which has already been ID'd.

This was taken out our dining room window after an ice storm a few winters back. DSCN4547 by lonestranger102, on Flickr

A couple from Algonquin Park, taken nearly 10 years ago. Untitled by lonestranger102, on Flickr Untitled by lonestranger102, on Flickr Untitled by lonestranger102, on Flickr

Do female Cardinals take on male characteristics once they stop breeding? Just tossing the idea out because it's been mentioned before that some female birds start to look like their male counterparts once they go through the change of life. I think the comment was referring to ducks at the time, but I'm not sure if it's limited to just ducks. Just a thought.

Yep, I'm cheating here. xwing Cedar Wa-

@Charlie Spencer I think PV-John was referring to Whatbird's ID search engine, https://identify.whatbird.com/mwg/_/0/attrs.aspx and not the forums specifically when he mentioned the absence of the Golden-cheeked Woodpecker.

Welcome to Whatbird, PV-John. As Egosnell2002 stated, the birds listed in the whatbird search database include birds of North America. Some Mexican birds appear in the database because they frequent the USA and Canada frequent enough to be part of the ABA checklist. If a bird doesn't make it to the ABA checklist, or similar checklist, it's probably not listed in the Whatbird database just like they're not listed in most North American Field Guides. Or something like that, more experienced birders may be able to explain that more accurately than I did.

I have always had a hard time distinguishing these two apart when I only get a quick glimpse of them. I'm often second guessing myself about the size of the bird and waffling back and forth on whether it was actually big enough for a grosbeak or small enough to be a finch. When we just get a quick glimpse, my sweetie will often hear me say, "That was a female Rose-breasted Grosbeak...I think." Then she has listen to me explain how hard it can be to judge size and my disclaimer that it might have actually been a female Purple Finch.