("Birders" just means bird-watchers in birder lingo...)
I got into this after my last trip to Costa Rica, where we had a guide who would take us on sunrise bird walks in the mornings. I enjoyed it so much it made me wonder what birds we have at home that I had not paid any attention to. Turns out there are a lot of really great birds in Utah too! I got a bridge camera (meaning not a DSLR, but a nice 60x optical zoom with plenty of setting options) for Christmas last year and feel like I'm finally getting some decent photos.
Being the rather obsessive person that I am... I jumped in to doing the Tracy Aviary's Citizen Science program, where they train you to identify birds by sight and sound, and then do volunteer work conducting surveys around the Salt Lake area that are used for scientific purposes (so they can track the various populations better.) I'm about done with training - we did our field evaluations this morning, which went okay, and then I have a written test tomorrow... fingers crossed! (Hah, not that it's the end of the world if I don't do well, as they'd likely just have you be the recorder rather than the observer on a team, but there's that part of me that's like A TEST! I must know everything... and I don't. EEK!) But needless to say, learning to identify birds by sound only is quite a task, and I'm only about a year and a half into this... lots of the other folks doing this with me have been birding for 10, 20, 30 years or more.
Anyway - here are a few recent photos:
A Lazuli Bunting - these are really common in the Salt Lake valley during summer (they just returned in the last week or two), but I never noticed them until I started birding - they're so tiny if you don't look for them you'd probably never notice one, despite the brilliant colors!
A Northern Mockingbird putting on a show. He'd sit perched on the highest branch of a bush singing and then leap up, flutter around and go back to the same perch. Literally - LOOK AT ME!!!
The same mockingbird looking at me with a hilariously grumpy expression. I think I was not the type of attention he was hoping for. "you're not a female mockingbird...."
A Loggerhead Shrike - these guys are beautiful, but are surprisingly vicious little predators, despite being songbirds. They will impale their prey on a thorn to tear it apart, since they don't have the strong feet of a raptor.
Two American Avocets sleeping in the morning sun. (They look so fluffy and soft.... I want to pet one!)
I got into this after my last trip to Costa Rica, where we had a guide who would take us on sunrise bird walks in the mornings. I enjoyed it so much it made me wonder what birds we have at home that I had not paid any attention to. Turns out there are a lot of really great birds in Utah too! I got a bridge camera (meaning not a DSLR, but a nice 60x optical zoom with plenty of setting options) for Christmas last year and feel like I'm finally getting some decent photos.
Being the rather obsessive person that I am... I jumped in to doing the Tracy Aviary's Citizen Science program, where they train you to identify birds by sight and sound, and then do volunteer work conducting surveys around the Salt Lake area that are used for scientific purposes (so they can track the various populations better.) I'm about done with training - we did our field evaluations this morning, which went okay, and then I have a written test tomorrow... fingers crossed! (Hah, not that it's the end of the world if I don't do well, as they'd likely just have you be the recorder rather than the observer on a team, but there's that part of me that's like A TEST! I must know everything... and I don't. EEK!) But needless to say, learning to identify birds by sound only is quite a task, and I'm only about a year and a half into this... lots of the other folks doing this with me have been birding for 10, 20, 30 years or more.
Anyway - here are a few recent photos:
A Lazuli Bunting - these are really common in the Salt Lake valley during summer (they just returned in the last week or two), but I never noticed them until I started birding - they're so tiny if you don't look for them you'd probably never notice one, despite the brilliant colors!
A Northern Mockingbird putting on a show. He'd sit perched on the highest branch of a bush singing and then leap up, flutter around and go back to the same perch. Literally - LOOK AT ME!!!
The same mockingbird looking at me with a hilariously grumpy expression. I think I was not the type of attention he was hoping for. "you're not a female mockingbird...."
A Loggerhead Shrike - these guys are beautiful, but are surprisingly vicious little predators, despite being songbirds. They will impale their prey on a thorn to tear it apart, since they don't have the strong feet of a raptor.
Two American Avocets sleeping in the morning sun. (They look so fluffy and soft.... I want to pet one!)