Twofer Spot the Bird
Here are two new Spot the Bird photos. The visual puzzle is the same in each: huge background, tiny bird. No camouflage involved, none at all; just hiding against a big landscape.
The first photo of an enormous oaktree (?) in Boyce Thompson Arboretum near Superior Arizona, east of Phoenix, is a photo I took because the branches of this tree were so amazingly massive and lofty. It was only when I got it home and onto the computer that I noticed there was a bird in the shot, because it had been silent. Lucky it wasn’t a jaguar, I guess. By the way, you’re not looking for an intrinsically small bird, just small by comparison to this tree. (If you find the bird, click twice for a fairly clear embiggening of its image).
I think this second one is easier, especially if you click to enlarge. This photo, ostensibly of a robust saguaro behind a line of newly leafed-out mesquite and the foot of a basalt flow in back, shows a genuinely small bird — a moderately Dinky Dude of the Desert, in fact — doing its singing thing for spring. Hear the jingling sound?
Neither of these will be hard for everyone, especially for folks whose eyes are sharp from being out in the field looking for small things in big, leafy vistas. I’ll publish enlarged versions of the pictures in a subsequent post. Extra credit for IDing the birds to species (not that there’s a prize or anything, except kudos to augment your birding kleos. And, to wax perturbingly didactic, EXTRA extra credit if you know the diff between kudos, Gk κῦδος, and kleos, κλέος).
And if you know what the big tree in the top photo is, please let me know, because I don’t…
Good Luck — I hope you SPOT THE BIRD!
For other Spot the Bird posts, go to the sidebar on the left, and click on the category, spot the bird.
(Top photo, A.Shock; bottom photo, E.Shock)
You don’t want spoilers in the comments, do you?
But I see them! The top one looks like a woodpecker and the bottom one, can’t see well enough. Hummer?
Pecan? pinnately compound foliage eliminates oak (but with the bark and size, does look very similar to an aged Quecus lobata)
Birds–I guess my eyes aren’t as bad as I thought–spotted them both w/o enlarging but did have to enlarge to see the cactus-percher.
I”ve picked my two species, but the dark breast on #2–is it a shadow?
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