Monday, February 18, 2008

Mystery Sparrow Video


Thanks to Mon@rch, who presents stunning video at his blog, I'm trying out blip.tv for video. This afternoon, I captured this sparrow in our backyard using Megan's Kodak p850 camera. The clicking noise you hear is the camera adjusting its image stabilization. I need to turn that feature of the camera off when I shoot video!

Although I may work as an ecologist (this link is fun, pictures of me with hair!), I am by no means a birder. I make my living working with Ohio's 2300 plant species. If I were to guess, I'd say this was a song sparrow, but I'm not really sure. This is where I need your help!

Tom

8 comments:

  1. I can't wait to hear about many of the cool plants that you study! Video looks great and my guess would also be a song sparrow! Also, thanks for the kind words! You like blip?

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  2. Monarch is smart, it's probably a song sparrow, I don't know all my sparrows yet!
    I can't wait to see a thunderstorm on your bird cam, that would be soooo neat!

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  3. Monarch, come spring, I can't wait to take pictures of plants!

    Chris, the cam is up and running, so keep checking back!

    Tom

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  4. Here is a song sparrow on my Flickr account. I hope the link works. I looked at your video and it looks like a Song Sparrow but was hard to tell.

    Abraham Lincoln Song Sparrow

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  5. Abe,

    Those are some sweet pictures. I think what was throwing me off about this bird is that I never saw its dark spot on the breast. But I also wasn't looking through binoculars, I was just looking a relatively low-res LCD screen of a Kodak digital camera.
    Thanks for your help.

    Tom

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  6. Nice video, song sparrow is my bet, as the other say in this comments here, but I don't really know much anyway, just start bird photography this year, and just shot them before (meaning with camera, lol) just for fun. Thanks for sharing, cool video, and looks like you have fun job. Anna :)

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  7. Tom:

    It looks like a Song Sparrow to me but, of course, the giveaway would be a clear view of a dark spot in the center of the bird's chest. As usual, the bird didn't cooperate.

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  8. Anna- Yeah, I've shot plenty of birds with the camera as well! It does sound strange! It is hard to believe that early naturalists studying birds by shooting them with guns. Things have changed!

    Thanks David, yeah, I just didn't see the spot, and I didn't have my binoculars. Not seeing the spot let me focus though on other parts of the bird, like its long pinkish legs and the fact that it really likes to hop. This was especially tame. Maybe it will hang around for a little longer.

    Tom

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