Im originally from canty, but been on the coast for a while. Often get people asking how to find the sky blues, nobody has asked about the Entoloma canoconicums though. I feel they are underrated, nice find.
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Spotted what I believe to have been a common merganser at Vassar College in NY (a midsize duck/loon-shaped bird with a dark head and pale body). Didn’t get a pic, though…
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I have seen them before, so not a ‘lifer’ in that sense, but it is in the sense that this is the first time I have been able to find a bird!
I am HoH, and really bad with sound directionality (much less, hearing bird calls). I have a birding friend (super into birding, litterally teaches ornithology at university level) and I just can’t. I try and try and can’t. Well. Today I heard a call and Merlin told me it was red-bellied woodpecker. I spent about 20 minutes trying to track it down and finally spotted it. It may not seem like much, but I have been trying for over a year (almost two years now!) to be able to find a bird on my own by tracking it down. This is my very first success!
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Did some mothing with friends Saturday night. My favorite lifer was this Pearly Wood-Nymph
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/153139787
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Is it possible to use a microphone that would play into headphones directly? It would be easy to find a direction the sound comes from as microphone cuts off sounds from other directions
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Ive never used something like that so I dont know. Making sound louder is not usually helpful as i can hear the frequency okay, or I cant, and the level “maxes out” - i dont hear it more if volume is turned up. So It depends on how good directionality is on those things. When ive seen them in nature docs it seems like there is still a range and you listen for the loudest clearest direction; which if the case that would not he helpful to me as in a forest a 30° span or whatever is still a wide section to cover! Its a different idea tho i hadnt thought of.
Ive tried the basic sound amplifier headsets before and it doesn’t help much, just ends up annoying catching in branches and hot to wear.
From my experience it’s pretty targeted, at least when recording you need it to be pointed right where the bird is, there’s still some range, of course, depending on the device itself.
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Just a note that you’ve already posted about swans!
I have, my apology
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I’ll post now cause I’m sick and even if I will go out this weekend, I’ll post new things in the next week.
First are ofc beetles as I was searching for them, Rhizophagus fenestralis with 8obs, Rhizophagus nitidulus with 4obs, Euryusa castanoptera with 4obs and a “common” Geostiba circellaris with 17.)
Not the first uploaded to iNat, but first ided Embolemus ruddii which is very cool, I’ve never heard about those wasps before!
Introduced blind springtails in a flower pot Folsomia candida, larvae of Microdon ant flies, prepupa of Macrophya duodecimpunctata sawfly, a tiny snail Discus ruderatus, and a pine bug with blue eyes I’ve been searching for for ages Chlorochroa pinicola.
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In all the wrong places, right?
The weather is still bouncing wildly here from warm to freezing, but things are definitely stirring! First snake (Garter) of the year yesterday and first frog (Leopard). But if we’re talking lifers here, I’ll have to pick a bird as they’re moving through now and it’s just a question of finding more time to get out there and catch them with my new zoom cam.
Like this Horned Grebe. Just chanced upon this one yesterday while walking along a popular lakefront trail.
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A Common Sailor Butterfly photographed via mobile, a magnificent stand. This is one of the most flutterful Butterflies but some how it was just laying on a leaf. Its was a tough one to photograph as there were thorns all over. My Mobile Photography almost matches the DSLR and I am happy about that.
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It does look suspicious 
but believe me not, he did had quite a bunch of groupies following him.
When I started, I thought all my best stuff would have to come from my old (but still good!) DSLR.
Once I got going though, I realized just how much it all comes down to the best camera is the one that works in the most situations, and that’s even more true for macro stuff. Sometimes, thorns, height, and other difficult shooting situations, are just not accommodating to large DSLR setups.
I moved to big zoom bridge cameras and it’s the best move ever in terms of getting more stuff, and more importantly, getting IN there and quickly with a camera that’s ready to capture things. Best, at least, compared to breaking the bank for a full-size, much bigger, new DSLR (I bought a used, damaged super-zoom bridge real cheap and repaired it myself).
Now I can catch that bird hundreds of meters away, or clip on a macro extender, and I’m good for decent ID shots for just about anything down to the 2mm range—working (or more accurately, ‘playing’) IN the field.
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Before I had only seen a dead specimen (I had uploaded it in January) of pyrilla lycoides(forewings withouts spots or hyaline, no carinae below eyes), but this week (I have uploaded the observations) I found dead pyrilla perpusilla(apical third of forewings with denser spots, no carinae below eyes) and p. abberans (carinae below eyes, spots equally dense across fore wings) These are my favourites, as the represent all species of pyrilla within Uttar Pradesh, India (Yes, I live Uttar Pradesh).
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Like a week ago I had some interesting lifers. First, the ‘‘Mangrove’’ warbler (Setophaga petechia bryanti), which is in fact a resident, mangrove specialized subspecies of the Yellow warbler. It was a handsome male singing trying to hide among mangroves. That day I went snorkeling and saw two cute Caribbean reef-squid, and later I saw what I think was the day’s best lifer: the Prairie warbler!
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I took pictures of a bunch of lifers today, but once I was done, I realized I forgot to put the memory card back in my camera. Painful, but I hope I will learn from my mistakes.
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