Another question: I’m having a hard time finding photos of birds from below, but that’s often the perspective I have on them in the field. I was looking at a goldfinch today and had a good view of its underside. The underside of the tail was white, with what looked like orange or reddish-brown tips. Could that narrow down which type of goldfinch it was? or am I misremembering what I saw and neither goldfinch would have a tail like that?
That species pair (American vs. Lesser Goldfinch) is still pretty tricky for me. If you’re going by plumage there’s a fair amount of individual variation to contend with (and for the American, seasonal variation). Sibley (who’s probably getting fairly annoyed at what I’m doing to his copyright; maybe I should delete these?) shows some of them looking like this:
A big help is learning their voices. Both species are little chatterboxes, and if you learn to recognize them that way it will answer the question quickly in most cases.
For me the journey from beginning birder to slightly less of a beginning birder has meant learning to pay more attention to things besides plumage. There are many other clues, and for distant/poorly seen/otherwise-tricky IDs those clues can be more important than which colors are where on the bird.
Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/619817799716601856.
