A low-slung swimming bird with a fairly long neck and bill. Is it a duck of some sort? Let's work this one out together, progressing from the family group (duck, etc.) right down to the species. Hint: How old is this bird?

On quick glance, there’s not much to go on in this month’s quiz. But this is actually a somewhat typical view of the species. And if you piece together the parts of the bird you can see, the ID comes together nicely.

Another flying bird for aficionados of such. However, the bird’s shape probably immediately suggests a family to most quiz-takers. Did it for you?

A flying bird heading away? Lovely. Indeed, and, as a bonus, the head and breast are heavily shaded, making it difficult or impossible to determine whether the appearance of no pattern on the head truly means that there is no pattern on the head.

An out-of-focus bird in a shrub? What kind of quiz is that? A realistic one, as our bins are not always focused at the right distance when we put ‘em up to our eyes. The bird could fly off before you get a sharp focus, so take in what you can when you can.

It’s a dark bird, a rather small one, seen from directly behind. Ugh. But take heart! We can do this. Check out the bird’s rather unusual coloration. And look at those striking white wing-bars. Or are those wing-bars at all? Let’s dig in…

Everyone knows what a duck looks like. And birders quickly learn the “drakes”—the males in breeding plumage. But what about the “hens,” or adult females, often much more subtly patterned than the drakes? Fear not! Quizmaster Tony Leukering walks us through the ID process and gets us to the correct species.

By popular demand, this month’s quiz bird is a member of that widely loved family Laridae! And to make the quiz even more fun, the subject is not a full adult! Wow! Have you ever received a more wonderful Northern Hemisphere–Winter Solstice gift?

A streaky bird in the grass. Well, part of a bird. The back part. Where to even start? See if you can judge the bird’s size. And the streaks: They’re not random. What colors and patterns do you note?

What IS that? Is that a tail and wingtips? What?! Yup, and that’s how it’s gonna be. There’s not all that much to go on, but more than enough to get to the right species...

Unless this is just a surprisingly bird-like piece of trash, this month’s photo quiz subject must be a species with white wing patches. At least that’s how I see it.

What a weird, gangly bird. That bird’s long neck and large, bicolored wing brings one common species immediately to mind, but is that the correct species?

This month, we have what I like to call a “swimmy bird,” typically when glassing a large body of water with a binocular, as in, “There’s an odd swimmy bird way out there.”

While the photo does an excellent job of not giving a clear view of the head or wings – both features that typically play a significant role in identification in this family, what the photo does show provides enough for certain identification, so have at it.

The quiz bird here is the brown duck facing left, but what is that species? The photo was not taken somewhere in the mid-Pacific Ocean, and the quiz birds are obviously not Wood Ducks.

Some birders do not get all that much practice at flying passerines. Rather, some birders do not avail themselves of studying passerines in flight, other than those typically seen in flight, such as swallows. This month, our quiz bird is heading away from us (granted, at nearly a glacial pace), so let us burn into our brains the obvious features that are highlighted by that interesting black-and-white color pattern at the wrist.

Ah, another obviously small bird, and one with yellow and streaks and at least one thin wing bar. That combo doesn’t leave many options outside of the Parulidae (Wood Warblers) and particularly excludes the largest bird family in the world, the Tyrannidae (Tyrant Flycatchers, >400 species).

The seemingly small size of the bird is important, but more important here are the streaking on the underparts and the tail pattern, the combination of which should help greatly restrict the number of generic options for this month’s quiz bird.

Wow! Missed the appropriate camera settings big time! However, this photo, whether truly taken like this or not, gives me a chance to discuss a feature notable here, one that I’ve wanted to broach in this venue for a very long time:
Sometimes, it’s the little things that we don’t think about that make the ID. The quiz bird is not a Slaty-backed Gull, nor is it remotely similar to that species, but I still want to discuss its string of pearls.

This month’s quiz birds are all of the same species and are readily determined to be ducks. Beyond that, many might have difficulty, although many will not.

Individuals of this month’s quiz species are rarely mistaken in spring, although if they are, males (particularly) are mistaken for a member of the family Icteridae. In fall, birders outside the species’ core migration range frequently flail at applying an identification...

It is a pleasant February day in the Great Plains, and an odd song catches our attention, so we cast around looking for the singer. Ouch. Not the best views, but at least we know this month’s quiz bird is a passerine with that foot structure.

Ah, another long-billed shorebird and the bill is in view this time. Review time. Perhaps the bill will tell us the answer. Who knows?
What species is represented here?

Another raptory-hawky thing is this month’s quiz subject, and I know that everyone is excited about that! The wings are certainly obviously long, so ruling out vultures, eagles, long-winged buteos (such as Swainson’s and Ferruginous), and probably even harriers. Unfortunately, the quiz bird is streaked below ...

Ugh! I know. Shorebirds. Ugh. Right? Nah! Shorebirds are fun! Spring is an easier time of year to deal with shorebirds because most shorebirds are in alternate plumage (aka breeding plumage) and are more distinctive then. Of course, many or most one-year-olds never quite get to high plumage, but these birds seem to be in fine fettle, what, with one sporting spanky new scapulars; it is May in the photo.

Those birding in wooded and forested areas encounter views like this far too often: A bird overhead straining one’s balance ability and with the bird extensively hidden by vegetation. This is a situation in which experience and knowledge help tremendously, as they can help slap a correct name on many a bird of which the typical, well-known field marks are hidden.

Various aspects of the month’s quiz bird’s plumage and some structure features rule out grebes, loons, cormorants, and all other “swimmy things” other than ducks. Once among ducks, distinguishing between dabbling ducks and diving ducks is mostly easy and straightforward.

Why do birds sit there all nice and steady… until one raises one’s camera? At least I expect this sort of behavior out of species in this family of passerines. Some quiz takers will work hard over this one, while others will snap out an answer immediately…

Don’t blame me! I didn’t do it! Blame the bird for running out of the frame! Besides, while the bill might have helped, it might not have. Second besides, there are only four reasonable options for the bird’s identification, so you’re just going to have to do it without the bill.

Given the excellent size comparison with the leaves and stems, this month’s quiz bird must be rather small. There seems to be an eye ring; obvious white wing bars; white leading edges to the tertials; long-ish primary projection; a short-ish tail; and olive back, nape, and crown. Some birders will immediately recognize the bird from two characters...

Individual birds clinging to a tree in this bird’s manner are frequently woodpeckers but could be any of a number of species, some of which do not habitually perch in this fashion. The seemingly large patch of white on what might be the wings rules out Brown Creeper and various nuthatch species among the relatively few inveterate bark-clinging ABA-Area bird species. That white patch also rules out various species that I have seen irregularly or rarely engaging in bark-clinging behavior such as flycatchers, vireos, jays, warblers, and even sparrows.

A bit of an odd little bird this month and one that would be, perhaps, more readily identified if the quiz were a video rather than a static photo. There is not much choice but to comb through the various species of ABA-Area shorebirds, and August is certainly a good month for those in most or all of the ABA Area. Distinctive features include…. Hmm, maybe I’ll leave determining those to the quiz takers. I will say, however, that one of those distinctive features is frequently overlooked when misidentifying this species for another.

There are not a lot of ABA-Area bird families that could claim a bird that looks like this, what with those long legs, strongly patterned tawny wings, and strongly black-barred tawny tail. In fact, most observers probably immediately narrowed the bird down to just a couple of species, neither of which is at all rare in the ABA Area...

Don’t you just love looking up at the nether regions of birds? I can imagine some quiz takers crying foul, but the bird is identifiable. In fact, it’s easily identifiable. One simply must be aware of the usefulness of certain characters, and that awareness takes study, both of field guides and of actual birds.

While driving through open country on a lovely May day, this brown bird pops up onto a fence and poses for a time. One might consider passing it by as it is obviously one of those brown sparrowy things.

With this quiz photo, April seems to be setting up as raptorial-thing month in the ABA Photo Quiz. If I remember, perhaps that will continue next year. The color pattern immediately rules out all ABA-Area vulture species and falcon species, including Crested Caracara, leaving us with ...

Driving down the road, you spot what seems an odd-looking bird for one perched on a roadside wire. You stop and get only a one- or two-second view before your presence flushes the bird into the nearby woodlot on private property.

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.

There are at least two features that often distinguish between skilled, experienced birders and others when it comes to large flocks of birds. The first is the understanding that just because many or most of the individuals of a large flock of birds appear to be referable to the same species does not necessarily mean that such an assumption is true for the entire flock.

While some might immediately recognize the species represented here, others may have to work out the ID. That difference is often the primary one between skilled, experienced birders and others. Research on how skilled practitioners of birding has shown that such use a different portion of their brains to identify individuals of species they know well than do birders that do not know the species well or at all.

Quiz photo taken late October.
Ahh, one of those pale, gull things. At least it’s not a member of Larus!
Or is it?

As any of the folks that have conducted migrating-waterbird counts – seawatches – can say, ducks in flight are relatively straightforward to identify. First, there’s flight style, which does a reasonably good job of allowing quick discernment as to whether one is looking at dabblers or divers...

The first response of some quiz-takers might well be, “What a horrible photo, particularly for a quiz photo!” Others, however, may well jump on the correct identification immediately. For those of us that are not accomplished at or comfortable with identification by shape, posture, and behavior, this could certainly provide for a difficult quiz. Those that had the second response posited above would have gotten the ID solely on shape and posture, perhaps aided by behavior.

Back to the quiz bird being in flight. Aren’t you glad last month’s wasn’t?! There’s not much interesting showing this month. The quiz bird looks long- and narrow-winged, which, if accurate, certainly helps rule out some possibilities...

A quick look at this month’s quiz bird’s feet, more specifically how the toes are attached to the foot, should get us into the correct bird order, as the passerine foot is distinctive. Another important, but widely overlooked bird-ID feature is our quiz bird’s...

This time we have a lovely, pristine, perfectly lit, perfectly posed bird that shows all the field marks we need to identify it correctly to species. Did you believe any of that? This month’s quiz bird of a bird photographed in August might confound a number of quiz takers as to which family it belongs, although at least the order should be straightforward.

Not a very good photo this month. Right? While I generally try to have reasonably good photos with the quiz subject in reasonably good focus, birding is not really like that. We do not see most individual birds well, and, at least for those with “good ears,” most birds that we detect are not seen at all.

No surprise. This month’s quiz bird is flying. I think most would agree that it is a bird of prey of some sort. I chose the photo this month to provide an opportunity to make a couple points about taxonomy that some or many birders apparently do not know.

For the second consecutive month, the subject of the quiz photo is easily and quickly identifiable to family and, by most, to genus. However, despite field guides, the ABA-Area members of that genus do not make for quick and straightforward IDs...

Most of us should be able to quickly narrow the number of options to a number requiring only a single digit. The plumage is mostly white, they have black wing tips, and neither the neck nor the legs are particularly long.
Have at it!

This bird is pretty nondescript. It’s brown with a bit of vague streaking below. The bill is thick-based and short and neither the wings nor tail are particularly noteworthy. Not too long, not too short. Not too wide, not too thin. Good, all-purpose wings and tail. Unremarkable.

Where’s the bird? Ah, there it is. This is something of a different quiz photo.
Yes, it is, to make a certain point: One does not necessarily need to see a bird all that well to be able to identify it. However, to do so, one does need to understand plumages and their progression in various species, as well as how those various plumages differ from those of similar species.

I can almost hear it now, a disappointed, frustrated, “Ugh. A gull.” Much more quietly, I can hear, “Hey! A LWHG!”

“LWHG?”

It’s that time of year. The time when raptorphiles head to the mountains, the shores of large lakes, the coastal promontories, the riverine bluffs to watch for southbound raptors. However, with a bit of luck and a lot of scanning the sky, one can encounter raptors in active migration virtually anywhere on land.

A few sparrowy things comprise this month’s quiz, so break out your reading glasses, as we may need to delve into minutiae. I can hear the cheers, now! Everyone loves sparrowy things...

This month we’ve got an apparently small bird flying overhead. Perhaps-important ID clues include the mix of buff and white below, the small bill, and the long primary projection. The final of those characters suggests that our bird is an individual of a species that is either a long-distance migrant or a highly aerial one… or both.

When looking at an unknown shorebird – or, in this case, shorebirds, the first task should be determining to which ABA-Area shorebird family our mystery bird might be referable...

This month’s quiz bird is obviously some sort of pigeon/dove thing. Certainly, those reddish-pink legs are typical of the group. While that leg color is typical of ABA-Area doves and pigeons, it does rule out...

While some of the poor aspect to this photo is the photographer’s inability to get the subject in sharp focus, much of it is due to the disheveled appearance of the bird. While we all like looking at crisp photos of birds in good nick (as Brits say), particularly of pleasingly attractive birds, not all birds can meet these criteria at all times.

This month’s photo quiz depicts one of the individual birds that was my first of this year of the relevant species. However, that bird is NOT the quiz bird.

Raise your hands. Who considers this an ugly photo quiz? I am not talking, er, writing about the quality of the photo, which, admittedly, leaves a lot to be desired. I am writing about what is shown of the bird.

Tony Leukering Fairborn, OH greatgrayowl@aol.com Photos and answers are supplied by Tony Leukering, a field ornithologist[...]

Tony Leukering Fairborn, OH greatgrayowl@aol.com Photos and answers are supplied by Tony Leukering, a field ornithologist[...]

Tony Leukering Fairborn, OH greatgrayowl@aol.com Photos and answers are supplied by Tony Leukering, a field ornithologist[...]

Tony Leukering Fairborn, OH greatgrayowl@aol.com Photos and answers are supplied by Tony Leukering, a field ornithologist[...]

Tony Leukering Fairborn, OH greatgrayowl@aol.com Photos and answers are supplied by Tony Leukering, a field ornithologist[...]

A distant bird on a treetop can be difficult to identify. Distance takes away most, if not all, of the features that we generally use to ID individual birds, leaving us with only gross patterns of dark and light, particularly on this quiz bird.

In bird ID, it is not finding a single character in the field guide that matches what you saw that enables correct ID, it is ruling out ALL OTHER species that share that character, even a semblance of that character.

What do we do with this boring brown bird? We cannot even see the head! Tony Leukering walks us through how to identify this bird.

A bird flying by… Better get the binocular on it before it’s out of sight! The bird might immediately strike one as a passerine or, at least, not any of the non-passerines – you know, all those birds at the front half of the taxonomy/field guide, many of which are waterbirds of various sorts.

This quiz bird has a plethora of useful field marks, so the fact that we are looking at the south end of a north-bound bird should be alleviated somewhat.

I find that many birders don’t really learn most of the plumage features of really distinctive species, such as American Avocet, Belted Kingfisher, and Northern Cardinal. Each of these species has quite a few features that can enable identification...

Large rocks by a water body with apparent wave action play a part in this photo quiz. The shortish, orange legs and long, white wing stripe are also important.

Relative to the small branches, this quiz bird seems small and that feature, in combo with the fact that it’s perched in a tree, probably puts us in the large bird order, Passeriformes, which houses about half the world’s bird species.

Photos and answers are supplied by Tony Leukering, a field ornithologist based in southeast Colorado, with strong interests[...]

A bird clinging to the side of a tree, right side up. Yes, there are bird species that regularly or habitually cling to the trunks of trees that aren’t woodpeckers, but the Picidae is a good place to start when one encounters such.

Is this an ugly quiz photo, or what! The quiz bird seems to have few field marks, particularly as most of the head and underparts are not depicted, but I guarantee that it is identifiable to species.

Oh, lovely. Part of a small shorebird. Many of us know that various features of the wing and tail can be quite useful in identifying shorebirds, particularly using the two together

This month’s quiz bird has the hooked beak and talons typical of raptorial birds and the lack of a facial disk and the various plumage features visible rule out the owls (order Strigiformes) and New World vultures (order Cathartiformes), so we are left with...

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.

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.

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.

Hopefully, we all agree that this month’s quiz bird is a raptor; certainly, the strongly hooked beak provides a datum supporting that initial ID. Raptors cause birders all kinds of fits as far as identification, for a wide variety of reasons. Their relative rarity means that most birders see relatively few individuals of most species in any given year, stretching the learning curve out over time.

Here’s an angle on a species that many of us seen frequently, but possibly not often like this. The features that grab my eye, include the white belly, the orange throat, and the white wing stripe. “What? White wing stripe? What is that?”

While many of us would get lost in the rufous aspect to the primaries of this month’s quiz bird, perhaps also the white in the secondaries, the initial critical aspect of this bird’s identification lies in noting its feet.

Ah, back to a flying bird; much better than those pesky facing-away sparrows. The short, wide, and fairly flat bill and longish, narrow wings do a pretty good at ruling virtually all ABA-Area bird families out, except for the Anatidae. I am certain that many of us do not particularly care for the viewing angle on this beastie.

Brown upperparts, longish tail, and pink legs on a bird standing on the ground: we can probably start the ID ball rolling with New World sparrows (Passerellidae; until recently, they were housed in Emberizidae). Yes, we can rule out the Old World Passer species [family Passeridae (e.g., House Sparrow), which are not particularly closely related to New World sparrows].

Our departing quiz bird may annoy some birders, as it did not stick around long enough to be identified. However, such birds can often be identified...

One aspect of identifying birds with which I see many struggle, is birds not in those ideal, field-guide postures. These non-profile views usually do not present most of the characters used most often to identify the species. However, this aspect of identifying birds may well be the single feature that best differentiates the highly experienced, highly skilled birders from the rest.

Ugh! While those of us that excel at identifying birds by shape probably consider this quiz straightforward, even easy, the rest of us may struggle. However, I look at photo quizzes as learning opportunities, and this is one doozy of an opportunity. So, let’s buckle down and look at our quiz bird carefully.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of birders get exasperated, even give up, on a bird that plays hide-and-seek in vegetation. They seem to want to always get that “field-guide view.” As we all know, birds often provide only partial views of themselves – it is a survival trait. Rather than get upset and turn away, keep watching it. While one may never get a full, clear view of the bird, it may well show enough of the critical pieces to be able to confidently slap an ID on the bird.

Another flying bird in the quiz photo. Surely Leukering can take better photos than that! I mean, it’s under-exposed due to the subject being backlit. That’s one that should have been deleted from the camera!

We don’t have lot of plumage pattern to hang an ID on in this drab bird. All that we can see of the body plumage is unrelieved grayish-brown, or brownish-gray. The lack of wing pattern also provides little in the way of clues: no wing bars, no ulnar bar, no distinct patch of pale coverts.

Ah, everybody’s favorite, a brown duck. Fortunately, despite many birders’ seeming thoughts that there aren’t, there are numerous useful ID characters presented in this photo that enable a quick solution to the quiz.