Congrats to Gloria and David on identifying last week's Yellow-rumped Warbler (and nice job considering subspecies)!
Note: If anyone needs a field guide during school hours, just ask me.
So now on to Round 5; We've got some fun ones this time... birds that are hard to see--and even harder to photograph! Camouflage, thick vegetation, and fast movement make the birds here tough to get a good view of, so you'll have to identify them on minimum amounts of information. As usual, I highly recommend that you use "view image" too see these photos full-size. Ready? Answers for both species are due by Halloween (that would be October 31st)!
Our first species was on a mountainside near Tucson, AZ. The first step is finding the birds!
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| Photo by the author. |
My first attempt resulted in this: At least you can see its tail. Sort of.
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| Photo by the author. |
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| Photo by the author. |
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| Photo by the author. |
Have fun!
Hello! As Cleveland works away on the first species, I looked up the second -- is it a Sora (Porzana carolina)? My bird book doesn't seem to indicate that it's found in Texas (mostly everything above that), but the swampy habitat and colors seem to match up.
ReplyDeleteOk ok, I've got this... I hope. The first one is a Gambel's Quail and the second is a Sora, maybe?
ReplyDeleteI must say that the Sora has the funniest bird butt I've seen in a while :) Thanks for a fun little challenge, Arch!
-Julia
Yay, round 5!
ReplyDeleteIt took a lot of time to identify the first bird because I mistook that tuft on its head as its beak. After zooming in it was much easier to figure out that the bird was a quail. I believe that it is a Gambel's quail because those are the most common type of quail in Arizona (according to the Internet).
As for the second bird: after a trip through Gloria's birding book, I found a bird called a sora that would fit this assortment of pictures... After further exploration on the Internet, I discovered that soras are indeed found in Texas.
Well, I hope I did well on this round; it was really fun! I had never seen a quail so I was really intrigued by its unique tuft on its head. Also, the pictures of soras were really interesting: the shape of their bodies seems different from other birds. Maybe its the legs... Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next round.
I think one of them is a Black Rail. I could not figure out the other. I like that these are getting more difficult. I look forward to more of your posts.
ReplyDeleteIs the second one some sort of quail?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm not very good at identifying birds...
Actually, having looked through the bird book more, I'm going to go with a Common Partridge for the second one, although the colors don't quite line up. It looks about the same shape and size.
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