Identify this
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Chough - Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax
While its black plumage identifies it as a crow, the chough (pronounced 'chuff') has a red bill and legs unlike any other member of the crow family. It is restricted to the west of the British Isles.
It readily displays its mastery of flight with wonderful aerial displays of diving and swooping. This Schedule 1 species can be found in flocks in autumn and winter.
There are two species of passerine birds commonly called chough that constitute the genus Pyrrhocorax of the Corvidae (crow) family of birds. These are the red-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax), and the Alpine chough (or yellow-billed chough) (Pyrrhocorax graculus). The white-winged chough of Australia, despite its name, is not a true chough but rather a member of the family Corcoracidae and only distantly related.
The choughs have black plumage and brightly coloured legs, feet, and bills, and are resident in the mountains of southern Eurasia and North Africa. They have long broad wings and perform spectacular aerobatics. Both species pair for life and display fidelity to their breeding sites, which are usually caves or crevices in a cliff face. They build a lined stick nest and lay three to five eggs. They feed, usually in flocks, on short grazed grassland, taking mainly invertebrate prey, supplemented by vegetable material or food from human habitation, especially in winter.
Population:
UK breeding:
250-350 pairs in Great Britain; 120-150 pairs on the Isle of Man
View towards west from the observation deck of the new Shanghai Tower, currently the tallest building in Shanghai and the second tallest in the world.
This is the big Huangpu River bend, with the Bund, the mouth of Suzhou Creek and the twin towers of the Shanghai IFC in the lower foreground.
I added some notes to identify buildings or other features in the picture, some of these notes contain links.
And, as usual, flickr wrongly assigns "Hongkou" as location name.
© All Rights Reserved - you may not use this image in any form without my prior permission.
Great Crested Grebe - Podiceps Cristatus
BIRD GUIDES NOTEABALE PHOTO May 26-4 June 2019
The great crested grebe has an elaborate mating display. Like all grebes, it nests on the water's edge, since its legs are set relatively far back and it is thus unable to walk very well. Usually two eggs are laid, and the fluffy, striped young grebes are often carried on the adult's back. In a clutch of two or more hatchlings, male and female grebes will each identify their 'favourites', which they alone will care for and teach
Unusually, young grebes are capable of swimming and diving almost at hatching. The adults teach these skills to their young by carrying them on their back and diving, leaving the chicks to float on the surface; they then re-emerge a few feet away so that the chicks may swim back onto them.
The great crested grebe feeds mainly on fish, but also small crustaceans, insects small frogs and newts.
This species was hunted almost to extinction in the United Kingdom in the 19th century for its head plumes, which were used to decorate hats and ladies' undergarments. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was set up to help protect this species, which is again a common sight.
The great crested grebe and its behaviour was the subject of one of the landmark publications in avian ethology: Julian Huxley's 1914 paper on The Courtship‐habits of the Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus).
Population:
UK breeding:
4,600 pairs
UK wintering:
19,000 individuals
Florida’s Eastern Meadowlark (Sturnella magna) is a songbird found throughout rural areas of Florida. Its breeding range covers most of eastern North America and parts of South America. Experts say it is difficult to distinguish between the Eastern and Western species as it can be determined only by voice and location. Seventeen subspecies of the Eastern Meadowlark are documented.
Actually, the meadowlark is not a lark at all. It is a member of the blackbird family (Icteridae) which also includes cowbirds and orioles. Meadowlarks are easily identified by the bright yellow throat and belly. However, the most distinguishing mark in adults is the black “V” on its chest. It can often be seen on a fence post belting out its clear, melodious songs and whistles.
Adult birds weigh just over five ounces, are seven to ten inches tall with a wingspan of 14 to 16 inches. Both sexes are similar in size, although females are normally smaller with a shorter wingspan.
This bird prefers grassy fields, pastures, cultivated fields, golf courses and other open habitats. It is a good friend to the farmer/rancher and a bug-eating machine. Insects comprise more than 75 percent of its diet, with grains and seeds making up the balance. It is especially fond of grasshoppers and crickets, as well as insect larvae and grubs. It feeds on the ground, picking insects from the surface or probing the soil to reveal its prey. Meadowlarks also eat the seeds of many weeds.
Males have two, sometimes three, mates at a time. Females build nests on the ground using soft woven grasses and hide them in the taller grass of an open field. The nest usually has an arched “roof” with a side entrance. A clutch of two to six grayish-white eggs speckled with brown and lavender may be laid any time from late March through July. Eggs are incubated by the female for 13 to 15 days. The young fledge at 12 days. The parents continue to tend them for about two weeks until they are able to fly. Juveniles are similar to adults, but the black “V” becomes prominent in adulthood. The meadowlark has been known to live ten years in captivity.
I found this one along Joe Overstreet Road in Osceola County, Florida.
It has been a awhile since we’ve spotted a Kestrel. We were visiting Yolo Bypass near Davis Ca and there were lots of birds to see, including this little beauty.
This Female kestrel was easy to identify by the rufous coloring on her head, wings, and back, with black barring.
The female’s wings lack the male’s blue-gray color.
Merritt Island - FL - USA
Space Coast Photo #19
Greater Yellowlegs as identified and confirmed by Patrick and Michelle Brock, Buckeye, and Patrick Maurice.
Thanks to all of you!!
Hopefully I have identified this correctly - butterflies are not my specialty but when I was researching it, that one looked the closest.
I took this photo on my hike at Granite Creek last weekend. The butterfly was very kind to pose on the fern long enough for me to get my camera out since I was standing on a rock in the middle of a stream crossing!
Identify.plantnet.org tells me that this is Kalanchoe laxiflora, common name milky widow's thrill. I have no idea where that common name came from. Oh, well.
Thank you for looking! Isn't God a great artist?
March
"Kallo is a beacon Mäntyluoto (Pori, Finland) front of the Kallo on the island lighthouse.
First lighthouse of the Kallo on the island was erected in 1884. First lighthouse fog signaling equipment was from 1901 from hand-to-use Hansen's sirens.
The current hardware elements assembled octagonal lighthouse tower and the splendor of wood on the side of the nurse home was built in 1903.
In 1906, the manual was replaced by a ball fog siren engines and compressors working with a siren, which was built in a separate machine protection. Fog horn was seven meters long and its jaw was three meters in diameter.
Lighthouse had two separate overlapping light device, which were identified by the differing red-white flashing lights. Light System was first amended on gas, and then an electric in the 1930s, and also the fog signal was replaced by electric equipment nautofonilla.
Cranial extension of the lighthouse and the red splendor of wooden housing is a Finnish nurse photographed lighthouses, the lighthouse Marjaniemi addition, it is the only lighthouse in which where you can drive a car."
www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMCA0V_Kallon_majakka_Kallo_L...
Identify plantnet wasn't very confident of its artificially intelligent identification, but we'll go with Filipendula ulmeria, and the rose family.
Thank you for looking! Isn't God a great artist?
Broadwater Warren RSPB, Kent.
Normally found in their hundreds munching away on yellow-flowered ragwort, and their bold black-and-gold stripes make them easy to identify.
This year although there were hundreds of Ragwort plants only a few had caterpillars.
THANK YOU for your visits, comments and favorites
Hyatt Lake - Cascade Mountains - Jackson County - Oregon - USA
Habitat : Shorelines
Food : Small Animals
Nesting : Ground
Behavior : Probing
Conservation : Low Concern
"The dapper Spotted Sandpiper makes a great ambassador for the notoriously difficult-to-identify shorebirds. They occur all across North America, they are distinctive in both looks and actions, and they're handsome. They also have intriguing social lives in which females take the lead and males raise the young. With their richly spotted breeding plumage, teetering gait, stuttering wingbeats, and showy courtship dances, this bird is among the most notable and memorable shorebirds in North America... Female Spotted Sandpipers sometimes practice an unusual breeding strategy called polyandry, where a female mates with up to four males, each of which then cares for a clutch of eggs. One female in Minnesota laid five clutches for three males in a month and a half. This odd arrangement does not happen everywhere and often they are monogamous, with the female pitching in to help a little."
- Cornell University Lab of Ornithology
My best effort identifies this damselfly as a Powdered Dancer in blue form. Still with the morning's dew on its back, it rests upon the bloom of an American Water Willow. Water Willow is a perennial which commonly colonizes along the edges of Ozark streams and is a host to many dragonflies, damselflies, bees and butterflies. If you would like to see the colonization of water willow along a stream and discover some of an Ozark stream's beautiful and amazing inhabitants, above and below the water, I would be honored if you took a look at my latest blog post here: www.gmichaellewis.com/blog/2015/6/life-of-an-ozark-stream
‘Marubi’ – from Photo Library to a Museum of Photography
The National Museum of Photography ‘Marubi' was established as an absolute need to identify and promote the photographic archive created by the Marubi Dynasty and other city of Shkodra photographers, a cultural heritage unique in its kind.
At the center of the museum project is the legacy of the ‘Photo-Studio Marubbi', founded in 1856 by Pietro Marubbi, an Italian painter and photographer who came and settled in Shkodra at the time. The activity of the studio over the years, was directed and enriched by three generations of photographers, until the early 1950s, time when Gegë Marubi was forced to give oneself up to the communist collective anonymity, by joining other photographers in the photography unit of the former Repair-Services Cooperative.
In 1970 was founded the Marubi Photo-Studio with around 500,000 negatives in various techniques and formats.
Identified only in 1985 and named after the American conservation biologist Steven Michael Goodman. It is nocturnal and weighing just around 50 grams is one of the smallest primate in the world. The smallest is Madame Berthe's mouse lemur that lives only in the Kirindy forest and is just slightly smaller.
Visited a nearby pond hoping to see a heron. No luck with the heron, but this old snapping turtle with a shell the size of a hubcap was resting in the grass. Its skin was riddled with clusters of black, shiny, warty-looking parasites that I have not yet been able to identify.
Fall plant detailed by frost. If anyone can identify this, let me know. I don't have enough botanical knowledge to make an efficient enough search right now.
This uniquely plumaged bird breeds on the coasts of Peru and Chile, and is restricted to the Humboldt Current. It is an erratic, rare visitor to the southwest coast of Ecuador. It can be identified by its dark grey body, white moustache on both sides of its head, and red-orange beak and feet. (wikipedia)
This mid-sized laughingthrush is found along the Himalayas and can be identified by the combination of the black cap and band on the brown tail. The underparts are greyish while the upperparts have scale like feather patterning. A distinctive pale loreal patch of buff colour and a broad dark moustachial stripe which borders the rufous chin and ear coverts are identifying features. There is however considerable geographic variation in plumage. The western population (occidentalis of western and central Himalayas) being greyer and paler making the dark patterns stand out in greater contrast. The eastern populations assamensis have a paler throat and the markings on the throat are much less marked. The populations in Meghalaya (rufitincta) has an orange wash on the underside from the throat to the belly.
It is found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Tibet and Vietnam. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or tropical moist montane forests.
WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre.
What3Words
///trailers.ripen.grownup
The Long-Tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus) is a small, gregarious songbird found across Europe and Asia. Often described as a "flying lollipop" or "tiny ball of fluff," it is easily identified by its distinctive extraordinarily long tail, which accounts for over half its total length (up to 8–9 cm of its 14 cm body).
Key Identification & Physical Traits
Plumage:
A soft mix of white, black, and pink. Most individuals in Western Europe have a white head with broad black "eyebrows," pinkish-white bellies, and pink-dusted shoulders.
Northern Variation:
Subspecies in Northern Europe and Asia often have entirely pure white heads.
Weight:
They are incredibly light, often weighing just 7–10 grams—less than a £1 coin.
Scientific Note:
Despite their name, they are not closely related to the "true" tit family (Paridae, like Great or Blue Tits) but belong to the Aegithalidae family, more closely related to babblers.
Extraordinary Social Behavior
Communal Roosting:
Extremely vulnerable to cold, these birds form tight-knit family flocks of 6–30 individuals during winter. At night, they huddle together in a row on a branch to share body heat, which is essential for their survival.
Cooperative Breeding:
This species is famous for its "altruistic" behavior. If a breeding pair's own nest fails, they often do not try again but instead become "helpers" for a related pair, assisting in feeding and defending the other pair's chicks.
Constant Chattering:
They are highly vocal to maintain contact within their fast-moving flocks, using distinctive "tsee-tsee-tsee" and rattling "tsirrup" calls.
Master Architects: The Nest
The Long-tailed Tit builds one of the most complex nests in the bird world, often called an "avian architectural wonder":
Materials:
Both partners spend up to three weeks weaving together moss, lichen, and spider silk (specifically from egg cocoons).
Construction:
The spider silk acts like "natural Velcro," creating a flexible, dome-shaped sack that can expand as the chicks grow larger.
Insulation:
The interior is lined with an incredible number of feathers—sometimes over 2,000 for a single nest.
Camouflage:
The outside is decorated with lichen flakes to help the nest blend into the tree fork or thorny bush where it is hidden.
Habitat & Diet
Diet:
Primarily insectivorous, they specialize in eating the eggs and larvae of moths and butterflies. In winter, they increasingly visit garden feeders, showing a strong preference for suet balls and peanuts.
Habitat:
They favor deciduous and mixed woodlands with dense undergrowth, but they are also common in parks, hedgerows, and urban gardens.
An aquatic passerine bird found across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and parts of North Africa. It's easily identified by the dark brown plumage sharply contrasted by a bright white throat and breast.
These birds are unique for their ability to dive and swim underwater, using their wings to propel themselves. They typically inhabit clear, fast-flowing rivers and streams in cold environments, where they forage for aquatic insects and larvae, small fish, and even tadpoles.
Dippers require clean, oxygenated water for their prey to thrive. Their nests are large, spherical structures of moss, often located near or above the water, in crevices, under bridges, or behind waterfalls. We found a nest maybe a few inches above the flowing water. There were 3 chicks inside that both the adults were continually feeding.
The weather was overcast and slightly drizzling - making for terrible light though.
Thanks in advance for your views and feedback - much appreciated.
Taken inside a garden at Wat Ounalom. Not exactly sure what it is, but Google Lens identified it as Cactus Coreid, a.k.a. a Chelinidea vittiger bug. S/he must have been napping in the sun since I got very close for this capture and s/he didn't move. 😁
PS: to those I follow 🙋♂️
Apologies for falling behind with comments and faves. After I turned sixty, I thought I would have more free time but I'm now working six days a week from 6 AM to 6 PM. I love my job; not complaining too much, but it's taking a toll on the free time I have for Flickr. Taking a timeout for a month or two. No hard feelings if you unfollow me.
Thank you for your understanding! 💖
It took the help of some friends who know snakes well to identify this as a juvenile Southern Black Racer. Their top side turns a deep black as they age and their belly and chin a nice contrasting white. They are very common here in southern Florida, in part because they are so fast at escaping. This guy greeted me ready to strike when I opened my garage door. Very aggressive. He kept attempting to strike at me and my camera. I moved him to some rocks where he could quickly do the disappearing acts that snakes do so well. If you see one, while their bite is not vemenous, they will defend themselves cornered. They eat things we consider pests, including other smaller snakes. If you’re one of those many people who have the fear of snakes built into their genes, best advice is to leave all snakes alone and, in this case, enjoy watching how fast it will slither away. (Coluber constrictor Priapus) (Sony a1, 70-200 lens @94mm, 1/250 second, f/10, ISO 1250)
Not 100% sure on this one but I believe it is a hibiscus. Very delicate crepe paper like petals.
Newly identified as a purple flowered rock rose! Thanks to David Nice for the ID.
WOODLAND EDGE NATIVE
Asters are impossible to identify by the flowers alone and one must use the structure of the stems and leaves to make a more positive ID. Variances within a species can also occur as well as hybridization with other Aster species. In the field, I try to make an initial (best guess) identification. Images of the stem and leaf structures are taken and checked with website reference guides for a more accurate ID. Still this gives me only a higher probability of being correct!
While trying to identify three other species, I ran across this fellow and knew that I had captured one. Very small with the hops of a bare foot seven-year-old when the floor becomes lava…a game we play with the grandkids.
This shot was captured in the 2/10ths of a second that it landed and disappeared back into the forest.
Taken somewhere between La Paz and next hotel in LaFortuna, Costa Rica on 10 January, 2024.
Identified by its most prominent field mark, an acorn in the beak, an Acorn Woodpecker removes a nut from its storage locker along the Boot Canyon Trail in the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend National Park.
The Yellow-cheeked Tit, easily identified by its spectacular headgear, is a resident of the eastern Himalayas and northeast India. This bird was seen in a fast-moving mixed flock of birds along a forest track in the foothills of the Himalayas in West Bengal, India.
Thanks for your visit… Any comment you make on my photograph is greatly appreciated and encouraging! But please do not use this image without permission.
Can anybody identify this animal print? Something has been walking around my backyard and making weird sounds in the middle of the night. It would be nice to know what's out there. Thanks!
Central Maryland
iPhone 5
2016