lonestranger

I told you we needed to stay in PERFECT step if we were going to trick them into thinking there's only one of us.

I thought I had stashed a few sunflower seeds under the bark right here, but I don't remember them being buried this deep.

I'm not sure if I'm interpreting it the way it was intended but I took it to mean, Shape of the primaries is diagnostic. I'm not sure if that's the elaboration you were looking for, but thought it might help by putting a different spin on the wording. I could be wrong though.

This may not be the Whatplant forum but the plants that birds frequent for food is very much a topic worthy of the Whatbird forums. ?

I used the word "only" because my 2TB external hard drive cost me $120 when I bought it. If price is an issue, USB flash drives are considerably cheaper and even come in 2TB sizes for under $40. Not sure about the quality but they're definitely a cheaper alternative.

Perhaps Black-faced Canary, or Black-throated Canary? I can't find anything on Black-fronted Canary so I am guessing it's a typo/brainfart for one of the other Canaries, maybe?

I'm not one to take advise from since I seem to be in the same boat but I'll share my thoughts. I don't know if I have hit the 100,000 mark yet, but I know that I had over 50,000 photos from just one of the four cameras I have used in the past 15ish years since I first picked up a camera. I have filled a 2TB external hard drive, that back up thingy, with photos and am in need of another storage device. I could go through old photos and delete those that aren't worth keeping and probably end up with 1.75TB of new storage space but I am a packrat with my photos and hang on to the old garbage for some stupid reason. Since I haven't gotten around to buying a new storage device yet, I have resorted to deleting some of the recent photos on my computer so I can make room to process(look at) the newer photos that keep accumulating on the cameras' memory cards. I keep wondering about my method because I seldom review old photos on the external storage drive because I usually keep a copy of the real keepers stored on the computer and online, so I wonder why I bother to keep the old ones if I don't even look through them anymore. There's only been two occasions that I can recall where I went back to the original photo on the backup drive and reworked the photo in post processing. Those two occasions don't seem like reason enough to keep thousands and thousands of photos, but I'm keeping them anyway. I think at this point in the game, sorting through my photos and organizing them isn't really an option, and I have already regretted deleting recent photos when I had mistakenly resized a group of images to save disk space and deleted the originals before I had cropped the images, so I think I will just lay out the money and get another external 2TB storage device and keep ALL my photos, the good, the bad, and the ugly. ? I just looked to see the current prices and the 4TB version of my 2TB external hard drive is only $115cdn with 1TB Solid State Drives running around $200cdn.

Typically people have been waiting at least two days before picking a winner, often announcing a cutoff time (eg: later tonight/tomorrow morning) prior to declaring a winner so that people get one last chance to come up with a caption.

Don't you recognize the inside of a lens cap when you see one?

I finally got a shot of birds flying past the moon, but it's kind of disappointing... So I made one out two photos that were taken a few seconds before and few seconds after the above photo.

Friday night moon Saturday night moon.

Spread your wings all you want, it's not considered flying until you let go and get airborne .

I can't help with sexing your bird but that is a great photo. Not just the dragonfly, but the bird is pretty cool too. ?

I wonder how many others can relate, but it seems like I am either hunting for a needle in a haystack or trying to select the best blade of grass in that haystack. ? I'm either trying to find one of very few photos of a species in a collection of thousands and thousands of photos, or as is the case this week, I am trying to select one photo out of thousands I can easily find. Here's two photos that while not great photos, combining them together helped make my choice a little bit easier.

I agree with @Seanbirds, there's no reason to think that you wouldn't see a Golden Eagle over a body of water. They might not fly over HUGE bodies of water but they're not likely to avoid flying over a body of water just because that body of water is in it's flight path. Taking into account that they do hunt fish as part of their diet, and also hunt Seals and birds like Swans and Cranes, it's reasonable to say that they do fly over water. A quote from All About Birds with the last sentence confirming that they catch fish... Food Golden Eagles prey mainly on small to medium-sized mammals, including hares, rabbits, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, and marmots. Black-tailed jackrabbits are a key prey species throughout much of their range. These eagles are also capable of taking larger bird and mammal prey, including cranes, swans, deer, and domestic livestock. They have even been observed killing seals, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, pronghorn, coyotes, badgers, and bobcats. In addition to live prey, Golden Eagles often feed on carrion, following crows and other scavengers to a meal. They also catch fish, rob nests, and steal food from other birds.

I can't say that I've noticed it in Northern Flickers, but I have noticed young Downy Woodpeckers getting red on their forehead before it comes in on the back of the crown so maybe it's a woodpecker thing.

It sure looks like a sparrow, but is it? I am starting to have doubts. I think @Liam has found another tricky one, or is he tricking us with a simple, but often confusing, song sparrow? White edged tail feathers don't really fit song sparrow though. *thinks out loud*

Well I was wrong about being familiar with the bird in quiz #2, and I know nothing about which birds eat which bugs, or which trees support which bugs, so I couldn't take advantage of the specific diet hint. I ended up guessing Yellow-rumped Warbler which seemed to match up when I looked at photos of fledglings, and they can be quite colourful too which seemed to match the part of Liam's of hint that I focused on. Good challenging photo @Liam ?

That would definitely explain why you might see more than one male in the web. ?

Okay, I made up my mind and I'm ready to direct message @Liam with my guess. I won't reveal my choice but I will say that my decision was based on my original feeling of being familiar with this species, and the hints dropped by Liam, and the discussion of others. If I was to offer a hint without revealing my guess, I would suggest looking at the bill and not the gape. Don't forget that the deadline has been pushed forward to today, so get your guesses, or revised guesses DM'd to @Liam before time runs out.

I saw this Belted Kingfisher fly down the river a bit and disappear behind some trees yesterday. As I got closer I found a small opening in the branches where I could zoom in from the cover of the trees.

This is one of the largest orb weavers that I have ever seen. It's body was about the size of a nickel with the legs covering an area about the size of loonie, the Canadian dollar coin. I would have preferred a better angle of view, but I wasn't going to get on the other side of the web to do it, there were too many other webs around for that.

Streaky males in their wintering grounds would be immature birds, wouldn't they?

Here in Ontario the males show up in the spring with some of them showing their obvious adult male plumage and others look like they are mostly adult plumaged with remnants of juvenile plumage still lingering. I'm not sure how long it takes them to achieve all their adult feathers, but I don't think they ever look like juveniles after getting all of their adult feathers.