Thread: Post your birdlife shots

Dont walk under this one

Originally Posted by scarry

This is a Bare Faced Go Away bird, East Africa.

Funny looking bird with an equally funny name.

Hello from Sherwood.

Nice photos.

I’m more familiar with the Grey Lourie in Southern Africa which is similar and also nicknamed the Go Away Bird. I notice that more of the field guides are substituting the common name rather than the species names these days.

Cheers,

Neil

Originally Posted by S3ute

Hello from Sherwood.

Nice photos.

I’m more familiar with the Grey Lourie in Southern Africa which is similar and also nicknamed the Go Away Bird. I notice that more of the field guides are substituting the common name rather than the species names these days.

Cheers,

Neil

We use the East African bird app.Dont have any books to compare.

But yes,we have noticed this in Aus,using the Aus bird app(Morcombe),and also the bird books.In fact there are some birds missing on the app,such as Buff breasted rail,and Gang Gang cockatoo.They are in the books,Pizzy,etc.I have emailed them but heard nothing.

Originally Posted by scarry

We use the East African bird app.Dont have any books to compare.

But yes,we have noticed this in Aus,using the Aus bird app(Morcombe),and also the bird books.In fact there are some birds missing on the app,such as Buff breasted rail,and Gang Gang cockatoo.They are in the books,Pizzy,etc.I have emailed them but heard nothing.

Hello again.

That’s also my experience with some bird and wildlife apps - the odd missing species or variant which can be a bit disappointing. To be sure, some of the free apps are ‘lite’ versions of a more comprehensive guide for which a payment is required. But even the latter can miss the odd critter or contain a narrow range of a given one. One example is an app that I bought covering animals of Southern Africa that is meant to be extra good. By and large it is but when I was in Etosha NP recently I tried to look up the details on the Tsessebe. Not to be found - only by happening to know that they are sometimes called a Topi further north was it finally found, but with no mention of the more common name across most of Southern Africa. The one I have doesn’t have particularly good distribution maps which is another shortcoming.

My more serious grouch about a lot of bird apps is that they still require you to have a bit of prior knowledge about what you are looking for. The better field guides typically have a key or set of silhouettes somewhere near the covers that give the general size and shape to help narrow down the search. Given that the birds are often a bit far away or move quickly makes it hard (for me anyway) to get a good look at them while fumbling through an index of common names - especially when you are trying to work out what that common name is by looking up the book.

The wildlife apps are less of a problem because most folks have reasonable idea of what they are looking at or get a better look because they are either big or slow.

Cheers,

Neil

He'll need a longer runway after loading that .

bird1_yesterday by Dave Blears, on Flickr

another shot of a bird in the mellaluca tree in the front yard


birdinthemellaluca by Dave Blears, on Flickr