Determining the age of a goose can be helpful for identification, and can also reveal some interesting behavioral and ecological information by enabling you to sort out family groups and subflocks. Given good views it’s not hard to distinguish Canada Geese that are still in juvenal plumage from those that are in adult plumage. By […]
Ageing Canada Geese Read More »
One of my regular birding spots is a small farm field near my house in Concord, Massachusetts. I can walk around the entire place in about 20 minutes, but I usually take about two hours and get in some good sparrow-study. The clump of taller vegetation shown here is always a good spot to study
Probability in bird identification Read More »
After listening carefully to Pine Siskins this year to pick out the calls of other species (see my earlier post) I have run across several other mimics. In early June in Arlington, Massachusetts I heard a remarkable American Goldfinch song that incorporated several phrases of a Song Sparrow song along with Northern Flicker and I
More vocal copying by American Goldfinch, Purple Finch, and Ovenbird Read More »
In early March 2009 it was my pleasure to spend a few days in California at the San Diego Bird Festival. On my first morning in San Diego I headed straight out to the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve hoping to spend a few hours studying Savannah Sparrows (who wouldn’t, right?). I had seen
Identification of Belding’s Savannah Sparrow Read More »
[10 July 2009 – update added at end] In July 1990 I spent several weeks birding in west-central British Columbia, where Pine Siskins were one of the most conspicuous birds, and I became convinced that Pine Siskins were copying the sounds of other species of birds and incorporating these sounds into their songs. I was
Vocal copying by Pine Siskins Read More »
Coincidentally, just days after my last post about the two White-fronted Geese in Concord, two White-fronted Geese showed up in Amherst, Massachusetts (about 60 miles west of Concord, but not the same birds) that appear to be one Greenland and one North American type. James Smith has some discussion and really nice photos on his
More on identification of Greenland White-fronts Read More »
The Greenland Greater White-fronted Goose (Anser frontalis flavirostris) is known to be a rare visitor to northeastern North America, but I have never been satisfied with a reliable, objective way of distinguishing it from the North American subspecies of Greater White-fronted Goose, also a rare visitor to the northeast. Bill color is the most frequently-mentioned
Identification tips for Greenland Greater White-fronted Goose Read More »
The primary challenge of distinguishing Canada from Cackling Goose centers on the intermediate-sized ‘Lesser’ Canada Goose, B. c. parvipes, which reportedly nests across the boreal forest regions of western Canada and interior Alaska (more details on my website here). I’ve seen a few birds that I thought were ‘Lesser’ in the northeast over the years,
Lesser Canada Goose in the northeastern US Read More »
My last post “How many rare birds do we miss?“, was simply getting at the idea that we can miss something glaringly obvious if we are not looking for it. A popular psychology quote goes “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it”. In the case of the moon-walking bear, since I wasn’t
So how many do we find? Read More »
Here’s an example of one of the countless thousands of questions that are still out there waiting to be answered about North American birds. I went to Texas in February (for the opening of the fantastic new Clif Moss Nature Education Center of the Corpus Christi Public Library) and I had a chance to see
Variation in Wild Turkey Read More »