flowery shrub and some birdies up by Lake Stuart

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miah66
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Re: flowery shrub and some birdies up by Lake Stuart

Post by miah66 » July 18th, 2014, 6:47 am

I'm going to change my guess of the LBB to a female house finch. It is too big, the beak is too chunky and there is no visible yellow.

Image

I'm a complete novice birder, but it's fun to try.
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R11
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Re: flowery shrub and some birdies up by Lake Stuart

Post by R11 » July 18th, 2014, 1:33 pm

n.bumppo wrote:Based on your new pictures of the duck I am going with either common or barrow's goldeneye.
I think they're Barrow's. The last time I was at Horseshoe Lake five years ago I took a couple pics of some of these ducks as well because I was unfamiliar with them myself. When I got home I asked a friend of mine who knows people in the local birder community about them, and a guy who works at the Nature Conservancy and is the most accomplished birder he knows got back to him and said he was pretty certain they were Barrow's Goldeneye due to the elevation, location etc.


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miah66
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Re: flowery shrub and some birdies up by Lake Stuart

Post by miah66 » July 18th, 2014, 1:40 pm

It's interesting to note that most of the photos of the Barrow's goldeneye females I have seen have orange bills, but a few have black bills. I wonder why? Also, the Lesser Scaup has a patch of white at the base of it's bill, but I can't tell from the photo if it is there or not.
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R11
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Re: flowery shrub and some birdies up by Lake Stuart

Post by R11 » July 19th, 2014, 8:44 am

miah66 wrote:It's interesting to note that most of the photos of the Barrow's goldeneye females I have seen have orange bills, but a few have black bills. I wonder why?
Bills.jpg
http://www.sibleyguides.com/2010/01/dis ... oldeneyes/


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payslee

Re: flowery shrub and some birdies up by Lake Stuart

Post by payslee » July 19th, 2014, 9:05 am

Thanks for all the IDs and great bird links. I think the barrow goldeneye is correct for the adoraduck - I just have a pocket camera so the detail on my photos isn't what it might be, but she definitely had an all golden brown head with no white, and a fairly pale / white breast. And Huey, Louie, Dewey, Stuey, Chewie, and Kablooey baby ducks are about the cutest birds I've ever seen...

-payslee

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Re: flowery shrub and some birdies up by Lake Stuart

Post by R11 » July 21st, 2014, 9:50 am

Just for comparison sake, here's a pic of one of the Barrow's I watched at Horseshoe. This is a full pixel crop so it's fuzzy but you can see it's features pretty well. What complicated identification on these was that while they looked to be pretty much full grown size wise, they still had their nondescript, shades of grey juvenile coloring. This one was in bright light and soaked from it's tireless bottom foraging dives so it's reflecting a lot of light which makes it look less dark than it really was. They were pretty entertaining to watch as they would fly in and buzz the lake quite low over the water at high speed, and when taking off would perform their running on water to get up to speed routine for a surprisingly long distance. And of course while working the bottom for food they would dive down for long periods often reappearing at some distance.
DSC_0165crop.jpg

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