lonestranger

I actually got out with the camera for a few minutes this morning. I wasn't out for long though. Brrrrrrr

I never did like the expression, talk to the hand, so...

Can you help us out with the division of NA, is that north and south halves or east and west halves?

Take your time while birding so that you can enjoy the other wildlife around you, too. Nature is a wonderful thing and it's beauty goes way beyond the birds we watch.

I suggest contacting iBird directly through this link. https://help.ibird.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

I apologize @Jefferson Shank for the lost quality during upload to Whatbird. Your original photo isn't compressed on the Macaulay website the way it is when I uploaded it here on Whatbird. This edit was quick and easy. I selected the Healing tool and reduced the selection size so that it was just slightly bigger than each section I wanted to remove. I used the Healing tool 5-6 times in small sections to remove the branch and a few other quick clicks to touch up a few finer details that didn't heal quite right.

With @Jefferson Shank's permission. Before After

Wow, that was fast, and I thought it was going to be tricky. Well done, @HamRHead, your turn.

Okay, try this one, more hints to follow if required. Dagger like bill, short tail, red on head.

Peregrine Falcon?

Check it out. ?

Accept that you'll make some bad ID's, and misjudging size will be the cause of some of them. Don't rush from one bird to the next just to get a higher volume of birds on your list. Enjoy the quality of birding as much as the quantity of birds.

When someone else ID's a bird for you, verify it yourself. I look at it like this, when I ask MJ if the ice cream is any good, I don't just take her word for it, I need to verify it myself. ?

Well that is weird. I guess I should have refreshed my browser before claiming the image was still there.

I can still see your painting.

American Dipper?

Osprey?

No, I haven't tried Topaz Denoise. I should check it out though, I know that a lot of my photos are noise heavy.

No, Pixelmator is not free, it's a reasonably cheap Mac alternative to photoshop type programs. There are free photo editing apps that can do the same things though. I believe Gimp https://www.gimp.org is still rated one of the best and Paint.Net https://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html is another free one. Take note that Paint.Net is the name of a program, not the URL of the website.

I'm curious how people are using the" Like" button now that there's an unlimited supply. I have never been overly generous with my "Likes", in fact, I seldom ran out of likes before the limit increase. There has always been far too much good content posted on the website for me to like everything worthy of a like. So, instead of using up my daily quota of likes, I would only like posts that hit a chord with me for one reason or another. I'm not sure my habits will change that much now that there's no limit because I always considered the "Like" button to be used for those special posts, and not to be tossed around casually. So, I guess I am curious how others decide what to like and how they use their unlimited likes. Do you like someone's post if your name is mentioned? Do you like someone's post if they voice agreement with you? Do you like a post because of a great photo or does it have to be a photo of a great bird to get your like? Do you like a post because the info/ID provided is accurate? Do you like a post just because no one else has liked it and you don't want anyone to feel left out? Do you like almost every post you read just because you can? Do you like explaining what you like? Go for it. ?

A typo, see below.

I haven't been out with the camera much this winter so I have been revisiting photos from the past and reworking some of them. I blurred the background a bit on this shot from 2013 so that the branches were less of a distraction. I like the results much more than the original and since it was so easy to do, I thought I'd share the procedure. I used the Quick Selection Tool of my photo editor(Pixelmator) to select the Wood Duck. By setting the Selector size towards the minimum, I was able to select small sections to add or remove parts of my selection as needed. Using the shift or alt keys while making the selection usually adds to, or removes, the selection in most photo editors. I suggest clicking repeatedly with the shift and/or alt keys to add small sections instead of trying to do the selection in one go by clicking and dragging over the entire thing. If over selection happens, and it usually does for me, I can always use the Undo command in the Edit tab. Once I had selected the bird I went to the Edit tab and used the Invert Selection command so that everything but the bird was selected. I now had the entire background selected and used the Gaussian Blur tool to smooth the background and make the tree branches less distracting. I used Invert Selection again to select the duck and tweaked the sharpness just a little bit. I then exported the image to my testing folder and opened it in another viewer. The entire process took less time than it took me to type this out explanation. I know many people can't be bothered with post processing, but if you play around with your photo editing software you can create something very artistic or maybe just lessen a distraction so your subject stands out a bit more. Disclaimer:) I am NOT an expert at photo editing and do not strive for perfection when I do edits. I mostly stumble through and learn as I go from experimental trial and error. Before After

Welcome to WhatBird @Pegger. Nice photos of a nice bird.

How's your bowling score? I suspect auto correct put a b in front of owling, but maybe your bowling score is worth mentioning.?

Gray Catbird?