(no subject)

[camwyn]

Woodpecker outside somewhere.

Can't see it. Probably a downy. We get them on the trees around this house sometimes. Flickers, too, and I've seen two flickers in the yard within the past three days, but what I'm not hearing is the jungle movie noise they make when they vocalize. So I'm guessing downy. They're small enough to miss if I'm not looking directly at them. I'm just hearing the drumming.

Turns out the hawk that's been visiting the yard is a sharp-shinned hawk rather than a Cooper's hawk. Apparently the two kinds look super similar, to the degree that the eBird software has an entry for 'Cooper's/sharp-shinned'- that is to say 'look, it's one of the two but I can't tell which right now'. I sent several photographs I took last week off to eBird volunteers who do the database entry work and said 'this was in my backyard waiting for the chance to eat something on its way to the feeder, what am I looking at', and the answer came back sharp-shinned. So I'm good with that.

Right now the blue jays are outside yelling their heads off, the cardinals have paused their courtship song for a bit, and there are robins calling in the distance.

Comments

[derien]

We also had a sharp-shinned possibly coopers! He sat next to our birdfeeder and ate a mouse Eor had put out there (which came out of one of our traps). And yes, we had the same experience trying to identify. :)

[derien]

(No, I did not send my photos off to anyone. I may try to crop and post them, though.)

[camwyn]

I've been participating in eBird long enough that I've had a few of their data volunteers contact me for clarification on some of my observations, and one of the volunteers in particular has been very good about identifying photographs where I was uncertain of the species. Otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue who to contact about stuff like that.