Thursday, August 20, 2009

Test Your Bird ID Skills

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If you live in southeast Texas, you should be able to identify the birds in this quiz. If you live elsewhere, here's your chance to learn about some of our most common yardbirds.

The video window below contains 10 clips of 8 bird species which visit our feeders. Watch the clips and see how many of these 8 common yard birds you can identify.



Before you check your answers, here's a question: Bearing in mind where we live, which one of the species is different from the others and why?



The answers are given below.



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The species that is different is the American Goldfinch. All the other species are resident here; the Goldfinch visits only in the winter.

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5 comments:

T Shaughnessy said...

Cool quiz Jeff. I like the way it was presented. I guess that's why you do what you do 8-5 ;)

Oh, I got a 100% but missed the extra credit. I should have known though if I'd have given it more thought.

Next time maybe do one with shots from the campus.

Jeff said...

I'll look to see if I have enough campus bird photos.

Kyle said...

Great quiz, Jeff! I'm ashamed to say that I missed BOTH of the House Finches (I never see them in person for some reason, and never remember what they are in pictures until I see them labeled and then have a "I should've known that!" moment.), as well as the non-breeding Goldfinch.

Give me woodpeckers, herons and egrets and I do okay. Finches are still the bane of my identifying abilities!

T Shaughnessy said...

I'm the opposite Kyle. Herons, Cranes & Egrets make my head spin.

I'll admit that the main reason I ID'd Jeff's were because I'vre seen them in his previous blog entries ;)plus I've got the same species (minus the woodpeckers) at my feeders.

Jeff said...

House Finches and Am. Goldfinch can be tricky unless you see them often enough to really lock them into your memory.
Next time I do a quiz, maybe I'll do big wading birds like herons and egrets.