Quizzes

Denis, Dave, and I stopped at Tom Beatty’s and at Ramsey Canyon briefly on our way home yesterday. We didn’t find any real rarities at the feeders, though you didn’t hear any of us complaining about Blue-throated, Magnificent, and White-eared Hummingbirds! It was good practice for me, with a Hummingbird Workshop coming up in a [...]

Live shorebirds are usually easier than photos: not only can you walk around them for a different angle, but they do things like move and call, offering clues a static image never reveals.
All the same, this Least Sandpiper, distant and blurry though it may be, didn’t fool anybody. Sewage pond habitués (probably the only people to [...]

I really enjoy living in a part of the world that has shorebirds in winter. This lovely creature was at the Avra Valley ponds Saturday morning.
 
Whaddaya think?

If it’s true that bad photos make the best quizzes, this one may never be beat!
Well, yes, of course, there was a trick. The bird is a male House Finch, readily identified by the distribution of red on the head, the diffuse brown streaking beneath, the strongly curved upper mandible, and so on.
But how old [...]

… mostly of my ability (or inability) to ‘upload’ a picture, but also of your ability to identify this bird to species, age, and sex.
Whaddaya think?