Summer this yr began on June 20 and ended, effectively, it hasn’t ended but. Not till this coming Saturday, the twenty third, which my wall calendar says is the First Day of Autumn. But, that is shut sufficient for now.
Since the primary day of summer season this yr I’ve added six new species to my life record, which I didn’t really begin preserving in written type till 2021 however it goes again to 2016 once I acquired my first true digital camera for chicken images. Fortunately my picture data are intact from that first digital camera (and my second, and my third) so I might confidently create the record. It stands at 159 species as of this writing.
The six new species for this summer season, in chronological order:
Orange-crowned Warbler, July 6
Pileated Woodpecker, July 13
Wow. As I’m making this diary, I notice my 4 under are comprised of two “two-fers”; two new species every day of two totally different days. Howzzat fer gettin’ fortunate, or what?
Western Kingbird, July 18
Barn Swallow, July 18
Cassin’s Vireo, August 12 (photographed at identical location as Lazuli Bunting, identical day)
Lazuli Bunting (full sequence) August 12
I acquired to questioning, simply what number of outings did I make this summer season? My picture submitting system tells me that, with only a slight little bit of keyboarding and mousing. Between June 23 and September 16, sixty-six outings with file folder created. Each day I am going out, the images from that day go right into a file only for that day. Each file folder has a singular date code, the Julian Date, so this retains my information in very neat chronological order for show in my file supervisor window. The Julian Date is the three-digit quantity main every file folder identify. Julian Dates correspond precisely to the traditional calendar dates. For instance “172” corresponds to the twenty first of June, “175” to the twenty fourth of June, “190” to the ninth of July:
172 21Jun23 _Spanish Creek _Spotted Towhee _Anna’s Hummingbird
175 24Jun23 _Dellinger’s Pond _Common Whitetail _seasonal change and overgrowth
176 25Jun23 _Dellinger’s Pond _Trail clearing
177 26Jun23 _Oakland Camp bridge _butterflies
178 27Jun23 _Dellinger’s Pond _Bullock’s and Bullfrog…
185 04July23 _Leonhardt Ranch _Downy Woodpecker
187 06Jul23 _Spanish Creek _Gansner Park _BlkHdGrosbeak and Orange-crowned Warbler
190 09Jul23 _Leonhardt Ranch _Brewer’s Blackbird
You get the concept.
But…
I’ve simply realized there’s a deficiency in the way in which I’ve been submitting. There’s no manner I can search all my information by chicken species, or quite Common Name, comparable to “Belted Kingfisher” or “Black-billed Magpie”. There’s nothing within the particular person file names for every picture that accommodates that info, since my file names are simply the alpha-numeric as assigned by my digital camera itself, i.e. “DSCN1234”.
I’ve give you a plan to treatment this, however it’s going to take fairly awhile. What I can do, since my chicken and nature information have all been via my picture enhancing program, is use that program to append the Four-letter (English Name)… Alpha Code…in accordance with the sixty fourth AOS Supplement (2023) …
to each one among my completed images. For 2023. Yeah, this implies hundreds. Thousands? Sounds a bit excessive. But, should you solely averaged three images every day for your complete yr, that’s 1,095 already. Or…
only for those I take to any extent further.
Yeah.
Way higher concept.
Now, quite than search via your complete record (as within the pattern screenshot above) what I’ll do is simply put the four-letter code into the life record of my birds that I’ve already generated. This will solely take possibly thirty minutes, or much less, as I’ve solely acquired 158 entries to do.
1. Acorn Woodpecker ACWO
2. Allen’s Hummingbird ALHU
3. American Avocet AMAV
4. American Coot AMCO
5. American Dipper AMDI
6. American Goldfinch AGOL
7. American Kestrel AMKE
8. American Robin AMRO
9. American White Pelican AWPE
10. American Wigeon AMWI
11. Anna’s Hummingbird ANHU
12. Ash-throated Flycatcher
13. Bald Eagle
14. Barn Swallow
15. Belted Kingfisher
16. Bewick’s Wren
17. Black Phoebe
18. Black-bellied Plover
19. Black-billed Magpie
20. Black-crowned Night Heron
(and so forth and so forth…)
I suppose I’d higher go try this. I’ll be again.
Oh no. You didn’t really play that, did you? Did you? Oh, sheesh.
I’VE DECIDED SCRATCH ALL THAT. Way an excessive amount of work, manner tedious, and never value it.
Never thoughts.
I’ve acquired a few different methods to seek out my images by animal identify. I’m going to be glad with that.
🦨 🦔 🦖 🦞 🦚 🦇 🦠 🧠
All proper, I gotta get again on monitor with the birds right here at Dawn Chorus, that is critical, dammit, and no place for funnin’ round.
Bird. On monitor.
Oh yeah. You really did watch this one, didn’t you? If not, return and watch it now. There’s a Roadrunner [bird] in it.
🦆 🦃 🦅 🦉 🐦 🐤
Other than new species, right here’s a choice of a few of my favourite chicken images from this summer season. I give the Western Tanager and the young Red-tailed Hawk further point out as a result of they’re very particular to me; in any other case there’s just one species every. I’ve left a number of quite common species out, like American Robin, House Wren, Black Phoebe, and Song Sparrow. I do take images of them, however primarily as a result of I don’t need to miss a shot simply in case the chicken occurs to be one thing else.
Update, Sep. 9. Five Red-tailed Hawks, inside simply over one-hour envelope and two mile radius.
Final update, Sep. 16, 2023. Three “first-of-season” for me. A video to go along with the Loggerhead Shrike.
I’ll shut this diary with the Loggerhead video. Keith Hansen’s Birds of the Sierra Nevada says of the chicken:
Not vocally gifted. Monotonous chur-chur, meadowlark or thrasher-like rolling chtttttttr. High, skinny chee-verr, first word degree, second down. Alarm, rasping down-slurred aannnnngh!
I heard and counted not less than 5 separate distinguishable calls/songs (you may’t hardly name any of those vocalizations a “song”, IMHO). Here’s how I hear them (with first-times famous):
- chirip-chirip; 0:01, 0:04
- pul-leep; 0:07
- bee-dee-bee; 0:16
- trzzz; 0:42, 0:47
- heeezzzz; 0:58
- after which a closing, barely audible ahh; 1:54
Maybe y’all can translate Shrike higher than me.
😁
That pretty effectively exhibits my summer season.
What’s been taking place in your chicken/birding/birdie world?
