July 17—26, 2020
$3,490.00 – $4,050.00
The ABA Ecuador Birding Bash has something for everyone! Birding, photography, sight-seeing, and extensions, extensions, extensions. Individual groups will be no more than 8 participants, but multiple groups will be staying each night in the same hotels and lodges so that they can mingle and reminisce over the day’s superb birding.
Once more unto the flying-birds quiz photo, dear friends, once more. (Apologies to The Bard for the paraphrasing.) And, to make bad worse, the birds are flying away from us!
The take-home message of this quiz (and the April 2019 quiz) is the same one that is front-and-center in most of my quizzes: Learn the field marks that aren’t usually noted in the field guides.
Ugh. Birds flying away fairly high in the sky. Yes, those features often make bird ID difficult. However, in many such situations with many species, there still are enough clues to get to the correct ID. This is one such situation.
So, we go from a bird flying away (in last month’s quiz) to a neck-breaking view of a different bird. Given the comparison in size with that of the various branches and leaves, we should surmise that April’s quiz bird is fairly wee.
As in many of my quiz photos, our subject bird is flying, and flying away at that. In reality, we would have little time to come up with an identification unless the bird changed course. Since we have a static image, we have some considerable amount of time to solve the ID problem.
January 23—28, 2020
$1590.00 from Tucson, Arizona
Southeastern Arizona is home to many resident species of breeding sparrows and a favored location for migrants to overwinter. We will visit semi-desert grasslands and riparian woodlands to observe and photograph over 20 species of sparrows, towhees, and longspurs. Daily outings will be followed by classroom presentations on identification, vocalizations, ecology, natural history, and conservation.
While bird heads hold a frequently large suite of characters that can assist with the ID process – bill color and shape, eye color, crown color and pattern, supercilium, eyeline, loral area, malar area, throat color and pattern to mention most – these features are only rarely required for the ID process.
October 16-25, 2019
$5,992.50 – $6,887.50
Yet another dark, flying bird to test our birding mettle. This bird’s longer bill should steer us away from the various raptorial orders, however. In fact, the combination of our quiz bird’s mostly black body plumage, an apparent white patch on the relatively short wing, the long tail, and extensive white on the head dramatically reduces the ABA-Area identification options.
