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Jul. 2nd, 2019 08:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynBirdwatching Rules of Thumb
Derived From Casual-to-Crappy-Binoculars-Level Birdwatching In Eastern Massachusetts/Northern NJ/NYC
- All small brown birds are house sparrows until proven otherwise
- All large brown birds with vaguely raptorish profiles are red-tailed hawks until proven otherwise
- Unless they are very visibly wobbling during soaring flight with their wings held steady, in which case they are turkey vultures
- All gulls are herring gulls until proven otherwise
- 'It was brown and duck-shaped' is totally a legitimate taxonomic category1
- If it looks like it's trying to air out its pits, it's a cormorant
- If it sounds like Lin Minmay in Robotech2, it's a house finch
- If you can hear it over interstate traffic, it's a mockingbird
- If it sounds like it's testing out six or seven different songs despite having a seriously constricted throat problem, it's a starling
- If it sounds vaguely like it's making computer-themed sound effects, it's a grackle
- Robins are the most repetitive-sounding and ridiculously persistent singers EVER
- Okay, mockingbirds in high summer can beat them for persistent
- Generic single chirps are house sparrows until proven otherwise
- Exceptionally loud, exceptionally clear single chirps are cardinals
- Single chuck! or click! noises are grackles
- If it looks like it's posing for a painting of the Holy Spirit, but suddenly takes a dive directly into the water rather than finding an Apostle to orbit, it's a least tern
- There are quite literally fifteen thousand crows of varying species in the Lawrence, Mass. area, but significantly fewer ravens, just be aware of that
- Sparrows are ready, willing, and able to KICK YOUR FEATHERED ASS, no seriously, the little bastards are basically Joe Pesci characters
- Osprey poop is distributed in a projectile arc that makes it difficult to see them as majestic raptors ever again3
- Bald eagles make peepy noises and squeaky noises and generally sound quite silly
- Red-tailed hawks make the cowboy movie noise
- Seagulls will land on the runway in front of you as you are accelerating towards them at thirty-five miles an hour; if you hit them you have to report it to the FAA and the NTSB rather than the Cornell Lab of Ornithology so try not to do that
- Cooper's hawks have no problem sitting in trees and waiting for smaller birds to get careless as they nibble on the crumbs you threw them from your breakfast muffin
- If it's in a swamp and looks like a starling but hasn't got a yellow beak it's a red-winged blackbird
- If it's in a swamp and looks like a grackle but isn't particularly iridescent it's also a red-winged blackbird4
- If it sounds like the Jungle Bird Noise from old movies but you are not currently in a zoo's tropical bird enclosure it is almost certainly a northern flicker
- If it screeches and it's green, it's a Quaker parrot5
- If it's large and blue and on the ground and you're in northern New Jersey, it's a peacock6
1 Applies to: female mallards, female common eiders, both sexes of the American Black Duck (which, I might note, has a description that amounts to 'Like a female mallard but darker brown'), females of at least two species of merganser, something like four different species of duck's young before they develop their adult feathers, etc. etc. etc.
2 That is to say, high pitched, sweet sounding, rapid-fire, absolutely no pause between notes- like an English-language voice actress being asked to speak as rapidly as possible in order to keep up with the mouth flaps
3 Despite how observations like this are often made, I did not find this out the hard way- I was kayaking in the Cape May area and saw an osprey land on a warning sign in the less navigable water, and just as I was reaching for my phone to get a picture but still a respectable distance away, it cut loose
4 Female red-winged blackbirds are brown and resemble either a large sparrow or an immature starling with a brown beak; males only have the red shoulder action going on if they're up for breeding
5 They're descended from escaped pets. Monk parakeets/Quaker parrots live in group nests that look like huge shaggy hives, which is how they survive the winters of Brooklyn and Edgewater, New Jersey. PSE&G does not like them because they can cause serious issues when they colonize electrical poles.
6 People who can afford multiple horses can afford weird birds, too
Derived From Casual-to-Crappy-Binoculars-Level Birdwatching In Eastern Massachusetts/Northern NJ/NYC
- All small brown birds are house sparrows until proven otherwise
- All large brown birds with vaguely raptorish profiles are red-tailed hawks until proven otherwise
- Unless they are very visibly wobbling during soaring flight with their wings held steady, in which case they are turkey vultures
- All gulls are herring gulls until proven otherwise
- 'It was brown and duck-shaped' is totally a legitimate taxonomic category1
- If it looks like it's trying to air out its pits, it's a cormorant
- If it sounds like Lin Minmay in Robotech2, it's a house finch
- If you can hear it over interstate traffic, it's a mockingbird
- If it sounds like it's testing out six or seven different songs despite having a seriously constricted throat problem, it's a starling
- If it sounds vaguely like it's making computer-themed sound effects, it's a grackle
- Robins are the most repetitive-sounding and ridiculously persistent singers EVER
- Okay, mockingbirds in high summer can beat them for persistent
- Generic single chirps are house sparrows until proven otherwise
- Exceptionally loud, exceptionally clear single chirps are cardinals
- Single chuck! or click! noises are grackles
- If it looks like it's posing for a painting of the Holy Spirit, but suddenly takes a dive directly into the water rather than finding an Apostle to orbit, it's a least tern
- There are quite literally fifteen thousand crows of varying species in the Lawrence, Mass. area, but significantly fewer ravens, just be aware of that
- Sparrows are ready, willing, and able to KICK YOUR FEATHERED ASS, no seriously, the little bastards are basically Joe Pesci characters
- Osprey poop is distributed in a projectile arc that makes it difficult to see them as majestic raptors ever again3
- Bald eagles make peepy noises and squeaky noises and generally sound quite silly
- Red-tailed hawks make the cowboy movie noise
- Seagulls will land on the runway in front of you as you are accelerating towards them at thirty-five miles an hour; if you hit them you have to report it to the FAA and the NTSB rather than the Cornell Lab of Ornithology so try not to do that
- Cooper's hawks have no problem sitting in trees and waiting for smaller birds to get careless as they nibble on the crumbs you threw them from your breakfast muffin
- If it's in a swamp and looks like a starling but hasn't got a yellow beak it's a red-winged blackbird
- If it's in a swamp and looks like a grackle but isn't particularly iridescent it's also a red-winged blackbird4
- If it sounds like the Jungle Bird Noise from old movies but you are not currently in a zoo's tropical bird enclosure it is almost certainly a northern flicker
- If it screeches and it's green, it's a Quaker parrot5
- If it's large and blue and on the ground and you're in northern New Jersey, it's a peacock6
1 Applies to: female mallards, female common eiders, both sexes of the American Black Duck (which, I might note, has a description that amounts to 'Like a female mallard but darker brown'), females of at least two species of merganser, something like four different species of duck's young before they develop their adult feathers, etc. etc. etc.
2 That is to say, high pitched, sweet sounding, rapid-fire, absolutely no pause between notes- like an English-language voice actress being asked to speak as rapidly as possible in order to keep up with the mouth flaps
3 Despite how observations like this are often made, I did not find this out the hard way- I was kayaking in the Cape May area and saw an osprey land on a warning sign in the less navigable water, and just as I was reaching for my phone to get a picture but still a respectable distance away, it cut loose
4 Female red-winged blackbirds are brown and resemble either a large sparrow or an immature starling with a brown beak; males only have the red shoulder action going on if they're up for breeding
5 They're descended from escaped pets. Monk parakeets/Quaker parrots live in group nests that look like huge shaggy hives, which is how they survive the winters of Brooklyn and Edgewater, New Jersey. PSE&G does not like them because they can cause serious issues when they colonize electrical poles.
6 People who can afford multiple horses can afford weird birds, too
