I’ll be in Thailand for the next two weeks, hoping to fulfill a decades-long dream to see Spoon-billed Sandpiper. Like many birders, I have always been fascinated by shorebirds – their subtle and elegant shapes and colors, the identification challenges they present, and most of all by their powers of flight and their long migrations. […]
Off to chase Spoon-billed Sandpiper Read More »
minor updates 2 Mar 2010 Identifying female goldeneyes is extremely challenging. Differences are subtle, subjective, and inconsistent, but experienced observers still build up a “template” of expected impressions that allow them to identify the species with confidence. Describing these differences, and identifying individual birds from photos, can be very challenging because the process of identification
Distinguishing female Barrow’s and Common Goldeneyes Read More »
I’ve just posted a new page that lists some of my most-frequently-used online references about trees. You can find it here, and it is also linked on the Tree Info page.
New page on Tree references Read More »
Distinguishing Common and Barrow’s Goldeneyes is always a challenge, and particularly so when the bird is a female. One of the most conspicuous and easily judged differences is bill color – Common Goldeneye has a black bill with a small yellowish patch at the tip, while Barrow’s has the bill almost entirely orange-yellow. This works
Identification of (hybrid?) female Goldeneyes Read More »
In 2004 I was working on a small painting of a flying Ferruginous Hawk, and I scanned the work at several stages to show the progression from pencil sketch to finished painting. I created an annotated slideshow from those scans for my 2009-10 exhibit at the Mass Audubon Museum of American Bird Art. Now the
My painting process – gouache Read More »
I’m back to the website after a long holiday break, and I have a few things I’ll be posting over the next two weeks. For now, important news to report is that my seminar at the Yale School of Forestry has been postponed. Originally scheduled for Jan 20th, it will hopefully be rescheduled for the
In a recent post on his excellent blog Earbirding, Nathan Pieplow points out an issue with the voice description of Buff-collared Nightjar in the Sibley Guide to Birds, which says: Song of rapid, sharp, dry chips in crescendoing series tup to to tu tu ti ti trridip accelerating and rising to flourish at end; pattern similar to
Kingbirds, nightjars, and the perception of bird sounds Read More »
On October 9th, 2005 I was enjoying the view at First Encounter Beach in Eastham, Massachusetts and watching a small flight of seabirds. A flock of gulls began to gather on the beach close to my car and I found myself more and more engrossed in the plumage variation of Ring-billed Gulls. This first photo
Variation in immature Ring-billed Gulls Read More »
Thanks to an email from Ray Telfair I’ve taken a closer look at the illustrations and descriptions of hickory nuts on pages 143 to 149 in the Guide to Trees. I used the terms “angled” and “ribbed” interchangeably, and illustrations such as Pignut Hickory p 145 appear “angled”, which is confusing and incorrect, so I’ll try to
Variation in shape of Hickory nuts Read More »
Watching the changing colors of fall leaves is always interesting, and even more so when you recognize the species of trees and begin to understand some of the finer points of variation in color. In these four photographs of Red Maple, all taken within a few days in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, I’ll describe a
Variation in fall color: Red Maple Read More »