lonestranger

While both male and female Trumpeter Swans are similar and not considered sexually dimorphic, sometimes it's pretty easy to tell them apart. Untitled by lonestranger102, on Flickr

Female(left) and male(right) Pileated Woodpeckers. IMG_3533 by lonestranger102, on Flickr

Female(left) and male(right) Baltimore Orioles. Untitled by lonestranger102, on Flickr Female(left) and male(right) Ring-necked Ducks. Untitled by lonestranger102, on Flickr

Welcome to Whatbird, Getchell. If the bird sings every morning, I suggest getting a recording and posting it for the experts to listen to. As you can see by the variety of suggestions so far, a written description of a bird song is hard to nail down, a recording on the other hand makes an ID much easier for the experts.

I had considered a "Bird Sex" thread like this one but thought a title like mine would need a disclaimer explaining that it wasn't about sex.

Looks like your view of the drive thru is a lot different than the view of house sparrows I usually see at the drive thru. Very cool to be able see that kind of behaviour up close and personal. While I hear the owls in my yard quite often, I have only caught a glimpse of a silhouette quickly flying out of site on one occasion. I'm like you, I suppose, when I know the owls are around I am afraid to go looking for them out of fear of chasing them off to someone else's backyard.

Welcome to Whatbird, Corgi. I agree with @Spyonabird, don't feel overwhelmed or worried about the quality of your photos. Speaking from my own experience as a long time viewer of the photos on Whatbird, I find that I enjoy seeing the bad photos just as much as the good ones, sometimes more so. Especially if a lesser quality photo has more of a story behind it than the great photos do, it's just more likely to hold my interest longer. They say a picture paints a thousand words and tells it's own story, well, I like it when a picture/photo comes with a few extra words as part of the story and/or backstory. Knowing more about the photo and the experience one had while capturing it, well, lets just say that I enjoying reading the "discussion" part of the Photo Sharing and Discussion forum as much as I enjoying seeing the photos shared, whether they're good or bad. Enjoy yourself sharing your photos with us and everyone will enjoy that you shared them. As far your question about lenses go, I'm not an expert but I'm willing to bet, not much mind you, but I'd bet that they'd be compatible with one of the newer digital cameras. I have no idea which camera but if you took your lenses into one of the real camera stores they'd be able to tell you what cameras your lenses are compatible with and have you setup and ready to go in no time. When I say "real camera store" I am referring to one of the camera stores that has knowledgable staff that know their stuff, not a big box store that sells everything and the staff knows very little about any of it. If the camera store can't fit your lenses to the camera you want, ask them if they can help you find an alternative or maybe an adapter that would accommodate your lenses. Sorry I can't really help except to suggest that you take your lenses with you and ask someone more knowledgeable how you can utilize them.

Your joke still works in english, at least in my adult head mind it does.

Welcome to Whatbird, ndgoodell. I can't help with your ID, but there are others here that know their hummingbirds quite well and should be able to help you soon. If you get impatient, you could use the more popular North American ID Forum and ask for someone to have a look at your images here. The same people usually help with ID's in both forums, but this forum can get overlooked sometimes. No harm in drawing attention to your post here by asking for help there. By the way, great photos of the hummingbirds.

Sorry Johnd. Please forgive my poor attempt at humour here, but it looks like a wrong turn.

I would guess, and it would only be a guess, that this is a red-shouldered hawk. Broad-winged hawks are early migrants and most of them would have passed through PA by mid September according to HawkMountain. I know that birds follow migration dates as much as they follow boundaries on range maps so it's not definitive, but it's enough to influence my guess for red-shouldered hawk. http://www.hawkmountain.org/raptorpedia/hawks-at-hawk-mountain/hawk-species-at-hawk-mountain/broad-winged-hawk/page.aspx?id=655

Welcome to Whatbird, Gordon Sick. I wonder if the hawk was trying to steal dinner from the heron during this encounter and the heron was fighting back for it's meal. The hawk is in the water's edge in a few shots and it looks like there is something visible right there where the hawk takes off from the water. Hawks are as opportunistic as most other birds and aren't above stealing for a free meal. That might explain the encounter between the two.

Thanks for the chuckle.

I'm far from being good at birding by ear, but if I heard this in my backyard I'd be looking up in the tree tops or on the power lines for a brown thrasher. I wouldn't be surprised if I saw something else making that sound though....Just so you know, I'm no better at 'Name that Tune' kind of games than I am at IDing birds by sound...LOL

https://www.enn.com/articles/56010-escalator-to-extinction-can-mountain-species-adapt-to-climate-change

If that's your idea of a joke I fail to see the humour there.... *shakes my head* You can tell Kemosabi that he can take that idea and....(use your imagination) You asked for opinions and then call people luddites because their opinions don't agree with your's? I will keep my opinion to myself from now on and wish you all the best in marketing your silly gimmick to those that are silly enough to buy into it.

Since you are looking for more feedback, I'll offer mine, although I'm not sure it's what you're looking for. Sorry, but I think that flipping the book sideways is a silly gimmick that has no advantage, other than a marketing hook for people that want to have something different than everyone else. Books oriented horizontally can't hold any more information than the same sized book that's oriented vertically, so what's the point? While a field guide with thinner pages and smaller print would have the advantage of potentially holding more data, I see thinner pages as being more fragile and smaller print as being harder to read. The horizontally oriented marketing hook directed at smartphone users might work, but I suspect that the smartphone users that prefer reading from their phone instead of a book would rather read from their phone than a book regardless of the books orientation. I took my camera's user's manual, which is just slightly bigger than the size you mentioned, and turned it horizontally to try and flip pages and get a feel for the different orientation. It felt weird and awkward holding it that way with one hand and it felt even weirder flipping the pages upwards, my fingers and thumbs just aren't used to turning pages that way. I think the idea of a small field guide with lots of info is a great idea, if it's durable and readable. I think the idea of making such a book and flipping it horizontally is a silly gimmick that would turn more people away than it lures in. I can only speak for myself but the horizontal orientation would be a big turn off for me. Sorry, but you asked what I thought and the simple answer is, not much at all.

If the woodpecker is on a standard sized suet feeder, I would say the bird is too small to be a Hairy Woodpecker. While we can't see the tip of the bill, it still looks more like a small Downy Woodpecker's bill to me. I'm sure someone more competent at IDs will clarify whether this is a Downy or not, and provide more reasons behind the ID.

I spent my coffee time this morning counting out the excess 685 of my oldest photos just to see where that took me date wise. My first upload was on Aug 12, 2008 and four years later, by Sept 1, 2012 I had uploaded the 685 photos now scheduled for deletion. Most of those photos, probably 90% or more, were shared on the old Whatbird. Since there is no longer an old Whatbird, the deletion of my older photos won't have any effect on me or cause blank spots across the internet. The deletion of other people's photos will probably have more of an impact on me than the deletion of my own files. I suspect it'll be that way for a lot of people. We can all backup our own content before it's deleted, but we can't backup all the photos that are an integral part of our favourite websites. I know it's a waste of energy, but I'm hoping that they see past the money and decide to change their plans for mass deletion.

I wonder how FL@$%#r would react if everyone that had to delete their excess photos deleted ALL of their photos instead of just those exceeding the 1000 photo limit. I doubt it would have any impact but I am seriously thinking about waiting until they delete my excess photos and then, in protest to their shady business tactics, delete the remaining 1000 photos myself. I know, I know, that's self defeating but with tactics like this, I don't want to support FL@$%#r. I won't support them by being blackmailed into paying for a Pro account and am seriously questioning whether I want my photos used to provide a forum for advertisers to support them. Maybe I'll just upload 1000 images that all say "this photo removed by FL@$%#r".

I had a hard time deciding between these two Blue Jay photos from yesterday... I couldn't decide between the profile or the direct eye contact....so I decided on them both. Photos hosted on imgur.

I already have accounts at imgur and google for sharing photos but I've gotten most comfortable using flickr. I don't use those websites so much for the storage aspect since ALL of my photos, even the terrible ones, get backed up monthly on an external hard drive. I use those websites for somewhere to host the photos I want to share online, like here at Whatbird. I guess it's the method they're using that bothers me most. It's like they're holding everyone's excess photos hostage and if we don't pay their $50 ransom they'll delete the photos from whatever websites they've been shared on. I think that's a shady business tactic that I am not willing to endorse with my money.

Here is Flickr's page explaining the same changes as mentioned in the article above. https://www.flickr.com/lookingahead I currently have 1685 photos on flickr which exceeds their new limit, yet those same 1685 photos only use 0.2% of the free 1TB limit. Obviously I don't need 1TB of storage, but I want permanent, sharable, storage for my uploaded files so that sites like Whatbird don't look like swiss cheese when flickr forcibly deletes the content I, and many others, have posted here. We often complain when someone deletes a photo at the source because it ruins the flow of the thread it's posted in, especially in the ID forums where a deleted photo makes it impossible for the next viewer to learn anything. I can just imagine what the forums will look like once flickr forces people to delete their photos, or forcibly deletes them for them. Comments like, 'notice the primary projection compared to the tail length' will have no meaning once those flycatcher photos get deleted from flickr to make room for the next new uploaded photo. Just imagine what it would be like if we were still operating on the old forum with years and years of photos that would just disappear one day. Yikes. I wonder how @Administrator feels about the upcoming flickr changes and how he thinks the deleted photos from flickr will affect Whatbird? Also, I wonder if there is anything within Whatbird's powers to preserve the content already posted here so the forums remain coherent when photos inevitably get deleted from their source in the future? So what are our other options if we don't want to pay $50 a year to use 0.2% of what we had for free? Okay, I have shared some of my thoughts and I didn't use foul language once, I think I did very well. I didn't even mention that I think the new owners of FL*%#@*# are being greedy @$$%#&$#@$ 🤬

Welcome to Whatbird, Robert Elwyn. I can't help with the ID of your hummer, but it looks like a young western species to me. Here in the east we usually only get Ruby-throated hummingbirds but there's always a few migrants from the west that cross over the lines on the range maps during the winter months. If I'm right and it is a west coast bird, it may stay in the area until spring if it finds a food source.

I read about this earlier today. I have to keep my opinion to myself if I want to keep using this website though. I don't think I could express my thoughts without using language that would get me banned. 🤬