Environment:
Start Time: 7:40 AM Temperature: 56 degrees Sky: Sunny and blue, light breeze
Technique for Bird Identification
Another great walking day that produced little in the way of great bird photography. So I thought for this post I’d discuss a bit about the process I use to identify birds that I see or shoot for these posts. Basically I shoot two “types” of bird photos. The first type is the obvious attempt to capture the bird in all its glory for sharing on this and other websites. Today’s featured image (above) is definitely one of that type. These pictures are taken with as much care and deliberation as the opportunity allows. But the second type of shot which is probably more important at least in terms of broadening my knowledge of the kinds of birds that I encounter from outing to outing. This type of image is displayed in the photo gallery at the bottom of this post. Both images are from the same original. The first more wide-angle image is the full capture that I made this morning. I saw the bird fly up onto a branch high above me and I initially thought it was a woodpecker. Just to be sure I did my best to capture an image to see if I could enlarge the bird and make a positive ID. The second version of the image is the best enlargement I was able to get. Fortunately I got a pretty sharp image and with that I was able to determine that my woodpecker was actually a White-breasted Nuthatch. Of course, I’m not always lucky enough to get this clear of a shot which means many of my sightings go unidentified.
Sightings:
Birds: Osprey, Starlings, Robins, Cormorant, Mallard Ducks, White-breasted Nuthatch, Tern, Killdeer
Critters: Tree Squirrel
Gear: Lumix GX-85, 45-150mm
Image used for Bird Identification. This is not intended to be a useful image for posting. 
This image is not intended for documentary or artistic purposes. The purpose of this type of image is to allow for an identification of the subject.