i like birds

Hi there! I'm Ricky (he/him) and this is my birding blog! :)

I am NOT a professional and shouldn't be credited as such. Please expect the occasional mistake, and feel free to correct me!

I’m a high school junior striving for a career in field ornithology or environmental conservation

Have any birds you want identified? Feel free to send me an ask, tag me in a post, or even PM :3 I'll do my best to help.

If you'd like me to explain my process on any individual identification, feel free to ask in RBs!

I'm from the US, and thus, I don't have many federal wildlife resources listed for other countries. I plan to add some eventually! If any non-USAmericans have good resources, please send 'em my way :)

Tumblr Life List (archive)

USEFUL TAGS

#not an id <- Posts without bird identification

#feather id <- Identifying birds based only off feathers

#call id <- Identifying birds based only off calls

#unidentified <- Birds that have stumped me!

#not 100% certain <- IDs I'm very unsure of; take with a grain of salt

#incorrect id <- Birds I've incorrectly IDed, usually paired with...

#corrected id <- previously incorrect IDs which I've revised

#id request <- posts I’ve been tagged in

MY TOOLKIT

Merlin Bird ID app

National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, Western Region, Revised Edition

Cornell Lab of Ornithology

National Audubon Society

eBird

US Fish and Wildlife Services

GENERAL RESOURCES

How to Begin Birding - Audubon

Birding Hotspots - eBird

Feeding Birds in Your Backyard - HSUS

What to do if you find a baby bird, injured or orphaned wildlife - USFWS

I Found a Baby Bird. What Do I Do? - Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Definitely could be! The heron in the photo I attached previously doesn’t have his neck fully extended, though. I’ll add one with its neck fully extended below

Black-crowned night herons do tend to have shorter necks than most herons; if this still seems to short than a juvenile yellow-crowned night heron seems plausible too!

Here’s some photos of them, with a relaxed and extended neck respectively

Brown spotted (almost leopard like) coloring, tan belly, tan-ish beak about 5-6 inches, big amber eyes on the sides of the head (took up about a third of the head), head appeared too big for the neck, long skinny neck, long feathered thighs, orange-red legs, 3 webbed toes with talons, about two seagulls tall, ~2.5 feet standing at full height, neck extended.

It freaked tf out of my sibling while we were fishing, and we’ve been trying to figure out what the hell it was for the past few hours

Thank you for the description, that’s very thorough and certainly made my job a lot easier :)

It does sound sort of like a juvenile black-crowned night heron to me! Here’s a photo of one

They tend to get as big as 28 inches (2.3 feet) which is a little smaller than what you described, but maybe you spotted a particularly big one?