birblr has no qualifications aside from being bird-oriented.
you only post every now and then? you’re a birblr
you just started the blog? you’re a birblr
you only reblog? you’re a birblr
you don’t have many followers? you’re a birblr
you’re not comfortable giving advice? you’re a birblr
As long as you like birds you are a part of this community. There are no special standards you need to meet, no one is greater or more significant to the community than anyone else. Don’t be afraid to chat with any members of this community and let yourself be seen, we’re all just a bunch of bird nerds here to share the glory that is birds!
I love the way you document the seasons of NB/NS (or however an actual local would abbreviate where you live). We have weird (from a northeastern North America perspective) phenology where I live, where the annual cycle of grow and flower and fruit and die back is more about when there’s rain (in the winter/spring) than what the temperature is outside, and plants will flower at different times throughout the year as a way of divvying up the available pollinators.
But where you are it’s fucking winter and then it’s fucking spring, and so on. And I don’t know; it’s just cool to follow your blog and see these little snapshots from throughout the year, and after a few years of it it’s like, oh, right: it’s snowdrop time.
I had hoped to go birdwatching with a friend today, but she ended up being too busy, so I decided not to drive anywhere and just went birdwatching in my own neighborhood (as usual). However, it was earlier in the afternoon than usual for me to set out (a little before 3) and I stayed out for over 2 hours. I saw many of the usual suspects, but also a few birds I hardly ever see, and exciting behavior in several:
Justyn Stahl did a great online talk for Los Angeles Birders last week on “eBird best practices”; I highly recommend watching it if you have the time. See here for that: https://youtu.be/kPYCngnmId0
ooh, I didn’t know you could filter for location. I’m always irritated that Merlin shows me photos taken in Ohio and Pennsylvania even for species that have very different eastern and western versions. Thanks!
As for that finch, I’m still not sure which it was. Even looking at the photos, I don’t feel confident that I would be able to identify it correctly. Sometimes it is clearly a house finch based on the shade of red. But not always, and in poor light I might not be able to use that. Besides which, when it’s not clearly a house finch, that doesn’t necessarily mean it clearly isn’t one! And we certainly have more house finches than purple finches around here.
More data points helps. If you have 5 or 6 different characteristics to run through it can help when an individual bird has one or two that are ambiguous or even point the “wrong” way.
I’ve been thinking lately about the meta-problem of how to identify difficult bird species, because this month’s and next month’s meeting for the bird club I’m part of is on “Better Identifications.” One point I made in this month’s meeting is that while birders at different levels of experience grapple with this for different species, it’s fundamentally the same problem.
An excellent way to get a slam dunk for this particular species pair would be to hear the bird singing, since their songs, though similar, are recognizably different. The Merlin app’s Sound ID feature should be able to distinguish them for you. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if Merlin can distinguish them just from their calls.
Mrs. Bennet, Miss Bennet, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Miss Mary Bennet, Miss Catherine Bennet, Miss Lydia Bennet, and a mysterious man paying them a call (who can it be? 0: ).
I had hoped to go birdwatching with a friend today, but she ended up being too busy, so I decided not to drive anywhere and just went birdwatching in my own neighborhood (as usual). However, it was earlier in the afternoon than usual for me to set out (a little before 3) and I stayed out for over 2 hours. I saw many of the usual suspects, but also a few birds I hardly ever see, and exciting behavior in several:
Justyn Stahl did a great online talk for Los Angeles Birders last week on “eBird best practices”; I highly recommend watching it if you have the time. See here for that: https://youtu.be/kPYCngnmId0
Is it weird that I don’t really think of it as a plothole? I mean, the way I think of it, fairytales are meant to be a general framework, and like… yeah, text is a static medium, but since fairytales have kind of fallen in with this transformative, folkloric tradition, so like… you can imagine the storyteller telling this story to different audiences, and filling in gaps according to when the audience is like “Wait, but what about…[insert issue with the framework here].” So I feel like as part of the storytelling tradition, fairytales have never been these static things full of holes, but actively adaptable–I mean, hell, where do you think all these adaptations come from! But at the same time, everything is building on everything else, you know? And like… maybe a lot of interpretations of Cinderella come from frustration towards previous iterations, but I don’t know… I think maybe we should have some compassion for people in the past? Like… maybe it’s easier for us to believe that we’re so much more egalitarian and so much more smart and so much more emotionally complex than people in the past, but I don’t think that’s fair. Look at us now. We’re sitting here, I have consumed something fermented and I’m telling a story, and every so often someone comes in like, “Okay but what about ________” and I’ll think for a little bit and either go “Ah well that’s easily explainable” or “Shut up and let me continue the story.” We were doing this shit in caves back in the Paleolithic era. :)
