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Liam's Weekly Quiz!


Liam

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Thank you for your submissions!!

This week's bird is a Tufted x Black-crested Titmouse hybrid! The dark plumage on the crest indicates Black-crested heritage, but the front is dusky brown and dark plumage in the crest is not as extensive as pure Black-crested. The crest is intermediate in length, in between Black-crested and Tufted. Here is more information.

This photo was taken in Coryell County, Texas on February 21st. 

Those who guessed Tufted x Black-crested Titmouse get 3 points. Anyone who guessed any species within the genus Baeolophus gets 2 points and anyone who guessed any species in the family Paridae gets 1 point.

Unliked Tufted Titmouse, Black-crested and hybrids are sexually dimorphic with females have lighter gray crests. Females and immatures are difficult to differentiate but definitive prebasic molt is complete by November, making this an adult female. However, since I did not include date there's no way to accurately differentiate adult female from immature of either sex, so additional points will not be given for age or sex.

Here's the 11/05/21 scoreboard.

_________________________________

1. BirdingBoy, Kevin - 35 points

2. Connor Cochrane, TheBirdNuts - 32 points

3. BirdNrd - 31 points

4. Kerri - 30 points

5. stitch58 - 28 points

6. AidanB - 29 points

7. Avery, IKLland - 26 points

8. meghann - 27 points

9. Kansabirdguy, PalmWarbler - 24 points

10. Peromyscus - 20 points

11. MichaelLong - 19 points

12. SeanBirds - 17 points

13. Quiscalus quiscula - 15 points

14. PaulK - 13 points

15. EdHogg - 11 points

16. Johnd - 8 points

17. SirVive - 3 points

18. DanP - 2 points

_________________________________

Let me know if I missed you on the scoreboard or if I made any other errors.

Thanks again for your submissions! This week's quiz will be posted shortly.

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Monthly quiz contest

Since it is the first week of November, I will start the monthly scoreboard after this upcoming quiz photo. The quiz photo posted on November 26th will be the last quiz photo for the monthly quiz contest so even though the scoreboard will be posted on December 3rd, those points will count for the November contest and not the December contest.

 

Quiz photo submissions

I am now accepting your submissions for quiz photos!

Please only keep one thread with me so my inbox doesn't explode. Quiz photo submissions as well as quiz guesses should be in the same DM thread to me.

Include: species, age/sex/subspecies (if discernible), location, and date.

Make sure they are at least the equivalent of a 2-star rating on Macaulay Library. Bad image quality should not be the main challenge to identification.

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I should note that Black-crested and Tufted Titmouse have an extensive hybrid swarm zone where hybrids are more expected than either parent species. There is a LOT of introgression in this contact zone. 

This hybrid zone very conveniently follows the I-35 corridor in most of Texas from the OK border south to Corpus and is about 75-90mi wide at any given point:  https://ebird.org/map/bcxtit1

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On 9/24/2021 at 1:23 PM, Liam said:

This week's quiz includes multiple species!

The rules apply to each species! You get 3 points for each species guessed correctly, though I won't disclose the number of species in the quiz. So, for example, if there are 6 species in a photo and you correctly guess all of them, you get 18 points!!

Since there are three individuals, please refer to them by their position in the photo so I know what answer to assign to which individual.

As usual, DM me your answers, preferably in the same thread you have used to correspond with me previously.

 

I had to look this up so sharing for others as well

Also, you're a sadist

Edited by PaulK
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Thanks, Paul!

I just wanted to remind everyone that for multiple birds, be sure to reference them as "Left Bird" and "Right Bird" or something similar when you DM me so I know which guess belongs to which bird. If you believe they are both the same species, you can just use the word "both" or "all", etc.

Also, just because there's multiple birds doesn't necessarily mean they're different species. ? 

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At first glance I thought 'at least here's an easy point - I can't flunk out completely by guessing any of the titmouse sp.'  I took the hint that at least hybrids were a thing with this species and in about 5 min digging realized that it didn't match any of the purebreds so it wasn't too hard to make an educated guess. I was pretty sure I hadn't ever seen any of the species - later last week after I submitted my guess I happened to see what I thought was a lifer Tufted only to discover that I did have one previous sighting I had forgotten about. 

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On 11/6/2021 at 7:40 AM, Kevin said:

Let me make sure I have got those right, you get points for every specie, not every bird. Right?

I guess I never clarified. You get points for every individual bird because each individual bird has the potential to be something different from any given bird in the photo.

Of course, this is within reason. If I post a flock of 10,000 peeps you don't get 30,000 points for identifying every one. ? It's a case-by-case thing I guess.

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13 hours ago, Liam said:

Of course, this is within reason. If I post a flock of 10,000 peeps you don't get 30,000 points for identifying every one. ? It's a case-by-case thing I guess.

In that case you will be required to id every individual by an identifier (bird 1,2 etc) and get docked double  points for every wrong id?

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11 minutes ago, Liam said:

I guess folks have lost interest ?

 

Or they just hate Scaup ID...

Or they didn't get as bored as I did last Friday. I normally hate scaup ID, but this one was fun. 

 

 

Please ignore that I had to ask for help with a scaup ID literally a day after submitting my answer.

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