PaulK

Not a great picture but saw my second green morph siskin in three days

For the very little this is worth, I've started to learn the four letter codes solely because it makes lookup in the eBird app easier. Just to show how well they've implemented it, I thought CAGO was Canada Goose because it pulls it up: (Re the actual point of this discussion, I like the way the conversation has been heading and support a standard here.)

I'm not familiar with the species but I'm wondering if it couldn't be an Eastern wood peewee. I was originally thinking flycatcher so was going through calls. I know the western ones sometimes look (to me!) like they have darker heads. This probably makes no sense in context but since there aren't any good leads...

This Kinglet is brought to you by the colour yellow

Here's a nice combination of Kinglet and low shutter speed

Re the reviewer, I know who she is because of social media stuff and she's fantastic. Re keeping it straight DEJU, I'm honestly not confident enough in my ID skills to report ssp unless it's something really interesting that I've noticed and taken a hard look at. So my list was however many DEJU plus this oddball, because I'm not looking hard enough at all the Oregons to make sure that there isn't anything else lurking in there unless it jumps out at me. So I'm not even making a point here, just reverting to what I'm IDing the others as. Literally the first time I ID'd a ssp it was to start calling the fox sparrows Sooty, and the reviewer picked it out as a locally rare Slate-colored, so I've decided to hold off on this kind of thing unless I'm really sure....

This is the best I have, and in looking at it I can see a bit more yellow in the back than I'd expect. What's interesting is when I played with the bird in Instagram, increasing the saturation just a little had some pale yellow pop out around the face, which you can see a bit in the first (unedited) picture of the bird from behind at the top of the thread.

Said it was Oregon, but didn't tell me what to do so I changed to straight DEJU.

Just adding that my reviewer rejected the cismontanus ID for this one as it doesn't conform.

Interestingly my ebird reviewer said I should call this a green morph.

Thanks everyone for this fascinating discussion. I've just realized I don't even know how to spell cismontanus.

Thanks Tony! I'll submit it that way and let the reviewer decide what to do.

I didn't want to mention it but I did look up Eurasian as well, and the pictures in the library make it look like they should be yellower in the face rather than pale like here. This is the palest I could find: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/78317421

Honestly it's hard to tell if they're being extra friendly. There are two feeders across from my place and the siskins (normal, healthy-looking ones) will let people within a few feet while on the feeder. They've completely lost all sense of people danger. This one was hopping around eating the seed under a feeder, and didn't seem too lethargic. I've seen some badly sick ones and this didn't jump out as such. Hopefully it will recover...

I liked this one from yesterday

Eagle watching the sun come up

Because it was fluffed up, or because it was pale?

Hi, this siskin jumped out as being a bit odd. Pale, not much streaking on the front, sharp contrast between cap/auriculars and the rest of the face, different from any of the siskins I've seen. The closest I can find in macaulay are birds tagged as green morph, but this looks too pale for that. Just a slightly odd siskin, or is this something specific that I don't know how to ID?

Perfect, thank you both!

Hi, this junco caught my eye today (Vancouver, BC). I've never tried to figure out the junco subspecies before but this was noticeably different from the normal Oregon juncos that were around. I've been trying to figure this out via the macaulay library and I'm getting confused so thought I should just ask here. I think my bird looks like a bunch in the library like these cismonatus juncos, but then again the first photo for Oregon is this, and I'd be hard pressed to separate mine from these. Please let me know what you think, because I'm baffled.

Peekaboo

Shiny

Just chiming in to say that a rough and ready way of doing this is via screenshot. Especially on mobile but on computer too, sometimes it's easier to zoom in on the photo in question and then snap a screenshot. This isn't a very high resolution way of doing it and won't leave with a great picture, but for ID purposes it's often just as good and far easier. If on a newer windows machine windows+shift+s does it.

Thanks everyone for your help with this.