Go to water. The ocean, ponds, lakes, and rivers all have plenty of them (at least in Eastern North America; I don’t know where you’re located).
My top bird species are a little different to most. They’re a mixture of iconic species from a specific location I’ve visited and more common species that I’ve accumulated sightings of from different places.
Toucans from the Honduras, shearwaters from the Azores and the parrots from the Cayman Islands where I currently live. I’ve only had a camera able to take bird photos for a couple of years so that skews my observations as well.
I’m imagine some folks who are better overall with birds than I am could do reasonably well guessing the region where folks live (or do most of their observing) based on their top 10 birds. Or at least those who have quite a few observations and/or who don’t post a ton of observations from trips.
When I saw the top 10 from @boattailedgrackle I immediately thought Pacific Northwest coast, probably Washington (though presumably south coastal BC would be similar).
I’m not so familiar with other areas, but did recognize some Australian birds (though I couldn’t tell you where in Australia they live) from some of you.
In Southern California, easiest way to see them is to spend time around the coastal saltmarshes (and keep your eyes to the sky hahaha).
To be fair though, my numbers may be a bit misleading to our area. I’ve also had the chance to see them in various countries–including at a HawkWatch in Panama during fall migration, where 100+ easily passed by every day (along with tens of thousands of other raptors!). Fun to see how people’s travels influence their observation lists
A bit embarrassing that I have so many observations of all the common species. But there is a reason that the stonechat is my avatar. They are cute, usually sit on top of whatever and not in the middle of a tree and just stay that little bit longer and rant. And I have to take photo every time I see them - no, I now say to myself only take a photo when it fills the screen.
My camera isn’t very good at photographing birds or far away species, so it makes sense that most of the bird species observed are all relatively tamer / used to human presence. I’m surprised feral pigeon isn’t on my list, although I generally go to places to photograph wildlife in rural areas and rarely ever urban so I guess that makes sense. The European Stonechat surprised me as they’re an outlier on my list and not very tame, but I’ve gotten lucky and photographed them quite a few times.
Probably pretty accurate. I see a lot more species, but often the ones I see most often I don’t wind up taking many photos of.
Most of the time I’m taking photos for the photography side, not the observation side, so this imparts a bias in the observations.
They are such personable birds, a joy to watch :)
City living!
The barn swallows are a bit over-represented just because I can’t back down from the challenge of catching them in flight
All of the bird species in your photos are native to your area (I believe Mexico?). In any case, those species are found from Mexico throughout much, if not all, of Central America. I’ve seen them all in Mexico and all but two in Nicaragua (not that they aren’t there, I just didn’t find them). About in half in Guatemala but I’ve only spent a few weeks there, mostly in the Peten.
I did not click on or try to see your Oriole up close but it looks like an Altamira Oriole. Another native and also found down into Nicaragua.
PS - although by day, I am an ornithologist, I don’t care to photograph birds, for the most part. A few on say the Christmas Bird Count. I used to lead tours to Nicaragua, Ecuador, and would take photos there. But not since 2018.
I spend my photographic hours on arthropods and fungi. I use a “bridge” camera, about 32x zoom and macro adjustment.
My top 10 is mostly common native birds in my area. I do have one invasive species but overall I am pretty happy with this.
All natives, woohoo! Although this is only accurate up until 2018 because I am very far behind on uploading sightings I reckon Brush-Turkey would be the real top if I was up-to-date
Since I only began uploading birds in Inaturalist around a month ago (until then I used Ebird) I don’t even have 10 observations of birds. Most of them are just local Indian birds, and there are tons of them (like purple rumped sunbirds) that I haven’t managed to photograph. But I’m determined to find more.
EDIT: I found a Shirka right now! Going to watch it for a while- will upload later! Yay! I’ve been searching for this fella for such a long time!
Here’s the Shirka observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/252130833
They don’t look boring to me, as there are only 2 of those that I would ever see - the house sparrow and the mallard. The rest are exotic! To me, all swans are black. A white one would be very strange.
I feel like mine are probably pretty typical for my area. The quantity of brush-turkeys is definitely influenced by the amount of time I spend on campus for uni. I’m quite happy to see that my top 16 are native/endemic though, but I’m sure being Australian helps with that!