February 2023 Photo Quiz

Tony Leukering
Dodge City, KS
greatgrayowl@aol.com

Some dark raptory thing. Oh, joy. And the lighting is not so helpful. Oh, rapture.

While some may be confounded by this photo quiz, others will nail it immediately. One of the benefits of really looking at birds, really studying them, is the little kernels of knowledge that such scrutiny can impart, items that might, down the road, enable certain ID of a bird seen poorly. Despite how well we can see this quiz bird, this is precisely where one or two of those little kernels can come in quite handy.

What species is represented here?

Photos and answers are supplied by Tony Leukering, a field ornithologist based in southeast Dodge City, KS, with strong interests in bird migration, distribution, and identification. He has worked for five different bird observatories from coast to coast and considers himself particularly adept at taking quiz photos (that is, bad pictures!). Leukering is a member of the Colorado Bird Records Committee and had been a reviewer for eBird since its inception. He is also interested in most everything else that flies, particularly moths and odonates.