Zooniverse Birds Around the World

Another Zooniverse project (besides Numbat Discovery in Western Australia) is to detect animals ingesting oil from oil spills in the Peruvian Amazon. I started this project but either my computer or my eyes don't have good enough resolution to see what I had to see. Before I quit, I found one bird I could "collect" and identify.

Speckled Chachalaca...

Another Zooniverse project I am working on is in Kenya. I have found quite a few "collectable" birds. I think it this one is an Egyptian Goose.

Vulturine Guinea Fowl

Yellow-necked Spurfowl

Yellow-necked Spurfowl

More Kenyan birds... would love help identifying them...

My guess is Laughing Dove

Ostrich

Egyptian Goose

Blacksmith Lapwing (one of the moderators id'ed this one)

House Crow ?

Superb Starling ?

White-bellied Bustards (another moderator-id)

Helmeted Guinea Fowl and Egyptian Goose (id'ed for me)

And then there's the oxpecker, who spends its time picking ticks off large animals. I think this is the red-billed oxpecker, who spend nights sleeping in giraffe's groins, apparently because giraffes don't lie down and squish them.

Birds of Western Australia

These are all video captures from a Zooniverse project I'm helping with: Numbat Discovery. I find very few of the rare Numbats, a colorful anteater, in these videos but quite a few birds.

With luck, some more exotic Western Australia birds will turn up. I will add them as they appear.


Thanks to Fred Ramsay for this identification:

"The bird with the white back - is an  Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen).

This dorsalis subspecies of the Australian Magpie has plumage intermediate between the White-backed subspecies and the Black-backed subspecies. When the Magpies are nesting, the male becomes very aggressive, attacking any passerby. So people on bicycles or walking nearby wear motorcycle helmets to protect themselves. If this were to happen here, the birds would probably be eliminated. But in WA policemen are stationed nearby to warn people about the birds’ attacks.

Fred also identified the birds below as "Grey Currawongs (Strepera versicolor). This is the intermedia subspecies that ranges from SA through southern WA. There are two other subspecies of the Grey, and there are also

two other Currawong species - the Pied Currawong of the east coast and the Black Currawong of Tasmania.

And Fred says, for the bird below, walking through the brush...

There are two white=tailed black cockatoos in WA. They are nearly identical except for habitat and bill.

Carnaby’s (Short-billed) Black-Cockatoo      (Zanda latirostris)

and

Baudin’s (Long-billed) Black-Cockatoo (Zanda baudinii)

Baudin’s is a creature of the Yarri forests; Carnaby’s is more widespread in range but is Endangered

because of habitat destruction.  My guess:  Baudin’s based on habitat … but the bill looks short.

Another day I found what looks to be the same bird, a little more out in the open but in the same location. Fred guesses Short-billed.

Many days and identifications later, this lovely bird appeared. I searched the internet and found that it is a common dove in Australia: Common Bronzewing.

Brush Bronzewing

Another Brush Bronzewing

Grey Shrike-thrush

Really Blurry Redpolls?? Or???

Today, Feb. 21, I walked through our woods in the sunshine. I heard a flock of very chatty little birds very high in the alders above me. I finally saw them and took very bad, very distant photos. The birds were preening at the time I took the photos. And talking nonstop. At first I had thought they were Pine Siskins since the Siskins have been at my sunflower feeders en masse. But there were no upward ssss as I am used to with flock of Siskins. Just non-stop rapid high single notes. I managed to get my binocs on one and thought I saw a red cap, definitely saw a white front bordered with stripes, so Redpoll jumped into my head although I have never seen Redpolls on our southwest Yamhill County farm. Please help! (First and last photos are the same shot with last one lightened.)

Barb Millikan ran them through photoshop...

Red-shouldered Hawks on the Farm

In spite of all my excitement at having Red-shouldered Hawks hanging out here this summer and fall, I never wrote a blog about it... and now they are gone. I'm hoping they come back and I can add to this story.

The first RSHA seen here was a first year bird back in 2011. It was here briefly one day and then gone. I took a very poor long distance photo.

RSHAs began appearing in the Grand Ronde area near our farm several years ago, off and on. 

But not until 2017 did they make an appearance here. I wrote this on Sept. 17 to Jeff Fleischer, the wintering raptor project coordinator:

"I have heard one screaming off and on for several weeks but never could see it until yesterday, when it had a screaming match with another Red-shoulder, all out of my sight in the woods. Finally it fly into the top of a tree very briefly then flew at something. Eventually the something turned into two Red-shoulders being chased by the evidently resident Red-shoulder. The resident landed inside the top of our big poplar. The other two flew right over my head toward Agency Creek. (I was in our South, unpastured field trying to see what was going on). After awhile, the alleged resident came out of the foliage and also flew to Agency but went downstream where the pair had gone upstream. Naturally I was clicking photos like crazy but all are blurry and not very recognizable.

Today, however, was a different story! I was brushing out one of our trails by Agency when a Red-shoulder started screaming from somewhere. I walked out into the field (same field the action had taken place near the day before) and an adult Red-shoulder was sitting near the top of a tree where a Red-tail often sits by our swamp, far SE border of our property. I took photos, then walked slowly through the field, stopping to take photos periodically. When I had gone not very far, a hawk took off from a tree behind me. It must have been right over me when I was at the edge of the woods! It flew into the swamp and disappeared. Meanwhile the screaming hawk stayed on its tree and kept screaming. I did get a photo I can use in my FFF Bird List blog, not the best but better than any I've had before. "

Then they disappeared for awhile, with a juvenile appearing on Nov. 11 and hanging around for some days after that. That's when I got this photo...

Now I'm waiting and hoping one or more return in 2018.

White Wing

Today, Nov. 26, 2017, for the first time in months, we saw White Wing, the mostly white Red-tailed Hawk with a lovely red tail that hangs out in the Grand Ronde area, west of Grand Ronde Rd and north of the Salmon River Hwy (Hwy 18). It seems to hunt along the power lines there. It was raining today and my camera turned the raindrops white.

Nov. 26, 2017

I thought I'd try to find past photos of White Wing with dates and see if he (she?) has changed over the years. This will be a work in progress...

The first email I saved about this hawk was in March of 2005 but I did not say when we had first seen it. In April of 2006, Mary Ann Sohlstrom wrote to tell me about the leucistic Red-tail she and friends saw on the wire by the Nazarene Church in Grand Ronde. That has been a favorite spot for that hawk over the years.



On Aug. 8, 2007, I wrote this email:

Today I saw White Wing on a low evergreen pretty close to the

Nazarene Church in Grand Ronde. A bit farther away, on one of

the power line poles, was another Red-tailed Hawk. This was the

one Carol Karlen and Marilyn VanDyk spotted in the same location

yesterday and called to tell me about. It looks like a normal

red-tail from the front, but from the back, it is quite

different. It has a wide, white chevron, white eyebrow, and

white terminal tail band on a red tail. Pretty bird. It's 
an adult so I don't know if this is a White Wing parent,

sibling, or offspring.

I have saved no other emails but we have seen White Wing every year since, so it is at least 13 years old.

May 30, 2012

 October, 2012

November 2013

November 2017

February 2, 2018, White Wing was sitting in a distant tree. My photo is not good. Shortly after, it took off and was joined by a second red-tailed hawk. They soared together. I think White Wing has a mate! With luck we'll see them sitting side by side sometime so we know, by size, if White Wing is a male or female.

February 2018

Shorebirds at Bob Straub Park Part 3

Are these Sanderlings? Or, at least, some of them?

Yes! says Paul Sullivan. I finally got one right!

These are Sanderlings, with white underparts and the black mark at the bend of the wing.  They lack a hind toe.  Note the scaly back.  Several of them have a remnant of the rusty color on the neck, left over from breeding plumage.

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Posted By Linda Fink to Birds at 9/05/2017 10:04:00 PM