The Birds of Hermann Park

[editor]

About a year ago, I started getting interested in birds, and a little bit into birding.  I recently went to Hermann Park to see what I might find there, and was surprised by the variety I found, even though I only walked through maybe a quarter of the property.  

I'm not an expert on birds, and not really interested in becoming one.  So I use Cornell University's Merlin app to figure out what I'm looking at.  I do the visual inspection, followed by the audio analysis to confirm.  Here's what I found that day:

 

Obviously, those aren't my photographs, they're screenshots from the Merlin app as it identified each bird.  My bird photos look more like this:

 

[mkultra25]

41 minutes ago, editor said:

Obviously, those aren't my photographs, they're screenshots from the Merlin app as it identified each bird.  My bird photos look more like this:

 

I'd normally be a little wary about geese getting that close. In my experience they tend to be territorial and somewhat ill-tempered, but I'm guessing the ones in Hermann Park are probably pretty tame due to the number of people that feed them. 

[editor]

24 minutes ago, mkultra25 said:

I'd normally be a little wary about geese getting that close. In my experience they tend to be territorial and somewhat ill-tempered, but I'm guessing the ones in Hermann Park are probably pretty tame due to the number of people that feed them. 

He got plenty close.  I was reading a paperback on a bench, and he kept grabbing the pages with his bill.  Perhaps he thought it was a cracker, or something. 

I'm freaking enormous, so I'm not bothered by aggressive geese, but I guess that's why they tell people not to feed the animals.  They get too used to being in close contact.

[mkultra25]

15 minutes ago, editor said:

He got plenty close.  I was reading a paperback on a bench, and he kept grabbing the pages with his bill.  Perhaps he thought it was a cracker, or something. 

I'm freaking enormous, so I'm not bothered by aggressive geese, but I guess that's why they tell people not to feed the animals.  They get too used to being in close contact.

A close friend, now deceased, used to live on Memorial in the 1990s.  There was a pond in the front yard occupied by several adult swans (he had "inherited" the swans when he purchased the property).  Every time I went to visit him, it was like running a gauntlet to actually get inside the house, as those swans were quite aggressive and would go after anyone that got within range.  

Ducks are usually mild-mannered.  Geese and swans, not so much.

[EllenOlenska]

Red-winged blackbirds are so dramatic 

[Tumbleweed_Tx]

This is now a general bird thread.. .

 

I saw this guy and it's mate in my front yard late one night, this was the best picture I could get with the junk cameraphone I had earlier this year (that garbage phone has been replaced) They have long beaks, a decent wing span, and their legs are about a foot and a half long. At first, I thought the neighbor had the poor taste to put flamingos in her front yard, but then they moved...

[editor]

21 hours ago, Tumbleweed_Tx said:

This is now a general bird thread.. .

 

I saw this guy and it's mate in my front yard late one night, this was the best picture I could get with the junk cameraphone I had earlier this year (that garbage phone has been replaced) They have long beaks, a decent wing span, and their legs are about a foot and a half long. At first, I thought the neighbor had the poor taste to put flamingos in her front yard, but then they moved...

 

Punch the description into the Merlin app, and based on your location and time of year, it can give you a list of candidates.

Based on they silhouette, guess is that it's this: