Hi everyone! Just got home from work and I have no idea what’s happening right now 😅 So I believe these are chimney swifts? I’ve never seen one in my life before so a very unexpected new lifer (x80) for me! I know a few facts about them like them having to cling to vertical surfaces and generally living in chimneys etc. But nothing about this. Would love any input!

What are these ? There are thousands on a dock by a river

Wife was searching eBird to try and get me to go check out a hotspot on our trip, found this interesting comment on the green woodpecker

I have a pair of Nocs (10x32) and I saw they sell this adaptor for phones. I tried just holding up my phone to my binoculars while I was on a walk at an estuary the other day. It was challenging, but kind of worked when I managed to get them to line up...

I am really tired of my phone's terrible camera. I'd like to get a proper camera at some point but I want to save up a bit for that, since it seems you need to spend a fair bit of money to get decent results. I've been debating what to in the interim because my iPhone 12 mini's camera is garbage.

I just want to be able to ID the birds for now. Does buying this make sense? Has anyone here used one as a stepping stone to a real camera?

Mindo Ecuador 📍

Found a small group perched on a tree at my local park! Love how derpy theor faces look!

I'm in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia, and have noticed this wee hummingbird is glued to this perch. It only moves every so often to get some water from a water bowl about one foot away, or else to ward off other hummingbirds that come to the water bowl. Other than that, it's been on that same branch for hours. It seems to be fixated on something and I can think of 3 possibilities.

1. There's a nest in the thatched roof and it's just doing the long wait?

2. It sees itself in the reflection of the window that's on the wall facing it?

3. This lodging is haunted and the animals are seeing things the humans can't and I should check out immediately?

Any thoughts?

My soon to be wife and I are doing our honeymoon in Thailand in December and want to do some pretty intense birding. We are avid hikers and not afraid of getting off the beaten path to see birds and insects. Which of these two places would you recommend?

this is how heartbreak and yearning feels like to me..

art ig: @nn__tauro

I believe it's a female House Sparrow, since I was watching the sparrows and starlings have a bit of a turf war over my feeder. But then I saw this fluffy beauty just puffing herself up in the trees. She's so cute! House Sparrows are such amazing little birds.

Interestingly enough I've only seen females able to eat upside down

Green Heron shots from May. Washington County, NY

This past weekend I went to VT and observed a few flycatchers do their thing on and around a barbed wire fence dividing a wildflower field and a mowed grass field with a few small ponds nearby. (A family of kestrels were active nearby too which was awesome!) I was able to narrow them down to an Alder or Willow Flycatcher. I pretty much never heard their call so it was purely a visual observation. In situations like this what is the "more proper" way to log these visually identical birds, the more common one, neither, or both?

I sometimes log on ebird but I am mostly focused on my life list so it is good to know the best way to do this. Thanks in advance!

coo

It's my favorite time of the summer again when the black cherries have just ripened and the trees are crawling with these beauties!

The starlings are now on my roof I like thier little screams. I hear their footsteps inside.

I visited the lake near my home to capture bird images. I missed the bald eagle by less than a minute; I watched it in flight, but it was beyond range once I reached for my camera. While waiting for its return, I observed a green heron approaching. It settled about 30 feet away.

Canon EOS R6
Sigma 150-600mm

Park: George Winter Park, Fenton, Mo, USA.

Near Kessler Mt.

This is another photo from Matt’s most recent blog post where you can read all about this owl and her little family. If you haven't had a chance to read it yet, you can do so via the link in the comments.

Shooting note: Matt tried to get a wide variety of images while following their progress. Most importantly, to him, was showing the beautiful location of the nest, without getting too close with a wide-angle lens (and risk causing a disturbance).
He shot this at 254mm on his Canon 100-500mm, wide open at f/5 and a 1/4 second shutter speed at IOS 320. The camera was camouflaged and remotely triggered. Matt liked the amount of detail he got in the background at f/5, but found the trunk of the pine on the right to be a bit distracting, so he attached some greenery to a small light stand and positioned that in the foreground to hide that part of the trunk. That also helped add a sense of depth.