Baby Owls in Golden Gate Park

Great news everyone! And I do mean great, because Great Horned Owls are nesting in Golden Gate Park. Well, probably not anymore, because even at the time I took these shots, a few months ago, they were getting kinda close to fledging I think. Big shout out to local bird-friend Eliya who gave me the hot tip and showed me the owls. These good good baby owls were shot around sunset, so the pictures I took aren't the best. Go see them next spring, why not. They're very good.



Great Horned Owlet aka. Fluffems aka. Sweet Baby Owl aka. Robert "DOWNy" Jr.
Bison Paddock, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California, USA
April 2017
Member of the True Owl Family
§A Glaring of Owls§
★The Provincial Bird of Alberta, Canada★

~real bird myth~ Pretty much any group of people who came into contact with this bird came to believe it had some kind of supernatural powers. The Pima thought the owls were reincarnated warriors, while the Passamaquoddy thought of them as friendly spirits whose calls could make people fall in love. The Hopi saw them as harbingers of warm weather and good harvests, and the Zuni used their feathers in battle to imbue themselves with some of the owl's powers of stealth. If there's anything everyone seems to be able to agree on, it's that the owls are not what they seem.

This is their mother. She has had it up to here with their shenanigans.

And these are the babies. I think there were three all together, but I never got a good shot with all of them. They:

Are always attached to their phones
Just want things handed to them, must've been all those participation trophies
Use all this slang I don't understand
Why can't they work their way through college?

Just kidding, I love these baby owls, and to prove it, here's an amazing .gif I made of them from some of Eliya's footage. May it see you through some hard times.

Juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron, Filtered

Today, dear reader, you're going to get a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the post-editing and production process here on the greatest bird blog in the world. You see, Microsoft, in all of its infinite digital wisdom, has decided to keep making changes to the program I use to edit my photos. Currently, I use something that's just called 'Photos'. Extremely basic, I know, but I wouldn't be the Amateurnithologist if that wasn't the case. While it might seem like a setback that all the things I've been doing up until now have been disappeared (twice!), I look at it as an exciting new opportunity. We're going to learn about the new set of filters they have gifted me with together. Certainly they wouldn't just give me a bunch of garbage after taking away options I found useful, right?

Let's find a test subject.



Ok, looks like a winner. I'd say this is a middling photo by the standards of my blog. Not an all time great, but certainly good enough to put up here. The only reason its gone unused is that I've already talked about Black-crowned Night Herons and don't have enough juvenile birds to make a post out of it. This was taken in June of 2016, by the way, at the Russian River in beautiful Northern California. A photo like this doesn't usually get much editing. I play with the enhance feature a little, crop it to maximize the bird-age, and let er' rip. Let's see what happens when I hit the enhance button now..

Oh dear god! This, to me, looks terrible. Well, it looks like 'enhance' is off the table. At least it didn't do that thing where it tilts the whole picture. Let's see what happens to our picture when we select the only other option besides that. Filters with fun names, away we go.

Does our heron look best in the "Vanilla" filter?

What about "Burlesque?" Maybe a little too risque for a bird blog.


How about "Neo?" No, I think I'll take the blue pill on this one.



Ok, I guess I worded that wrong, because now my bird is completely blue. The "arctic" filter is not for me either.

And now he's see orange he looks like he ought to run for president. Why is this called "Zeke?" Your guess is as good as mine.

Well, that was a lot of fun, but our bird still looks pretty bad. I guess I could post it unedited, but that's just a little too low effort, even for me. After mucking around for a while, I found some more detailed settings. Turns out I don't want to 'enhance' anymore, now I want to 'adjust'.

I think this is what I would land on. Hopefully you've enjoyed this meta-blog, and if you have any recommendation for post production, lay it on me, I'm glad to take advice. Oh, one more new feature I've discovered. I can write on the picture with my finger.

Snowy Plover and Chick

Snowy Plover aka. Western Snowy Plover
Coal Oil Point Reserve, Isla Vista, California, USA
July 2015
Member of the Lapwing and Plover Family
§A Brace of Plovers§
★North America's Smallest Plover★

~true bird fact~ Young snowy plovers can leave the nest an amazing 3 hours after hatching, and are already capable at that point of running, swimming, and catching food. They still need the experience and brooding of their parent, who at that point is generally a single dad, but they're extremely independent as bird chicks go. Oh, you might be wondering if these precocious bird chicks are cute or not. Well..

Yes. The answer is yes.

How endangered are they? Like the Burrowing Owl, and the California Condor, the Snowy Plover is one of California's most well known endangered birds. They are designated as 'Threatened' by the Endangered Species Act, at least in their Western Population. They are a bird who makes their home on wide, flat expanses of sandy beach, mostly breeding in Southern California, and as you can imagine they run up against humanss fairly regularly. A number of concentrated conservation programs, led by the UC system, have brought Western Plovers back from the brink. I personally was able to see these plovers on a beautiful and active recreational beach near Santa Barbara, where signage, rope lines, and volunteers are all that protect the plover. It seems to be enough, as the program is a fairly dramatic success. Your blog author can never really tell why conservation for some birds really takes off the way it does, while others languish in obscurity, but it's always nice to see when it happens. Snowy Plovers are popular enough that they have a website dedicated to them, westernsnowyplover.org, which features an 11 minute video for kids, printable signs, and an extremely detailed recovery plan. Oh, and go watch that video, it's amazing.

Baby Birds in New York City

It's summer and baby birds are on the rise! Well, more like adolescent birds at this point, for the most part. These pictures were all taken in the past week or so in NYC, where your Amatuernithologist took a short vacation. Birding there was.. not spectacular as far as numbers or new species, but I got some good pictures, and there were some pretty neat discoveries that I'm sure you'll all be excited to see whenever they roll onto the blog. What New York did have, however, was an abundance of young birds, which is good news, since our Research shows that blog readers respond most to Cute Baby Animals (followed shortly by Unusual Animal Friends [UAFs]).

American Robin
The High Line, Manhattan, NYC, NY, USA
July 2015


When I saw this guy squabbling with an adult American Robin, I was hoping that I had a cool new bird. A little research confirmed that I was probably just looking at a younger robin. How come it's never a Wood Thrush? This bird listens to rebellious music.



This is American Robin in her adult form (and baby form, if you look closely). Notice how she has become more mature with age, and has settled into adult responsibility. Takes care of herself with small wellness rituals every day.

European Starling
Battery Park, Manhattan, NYC, NY, USA
July 2015

Major sibling rivalry here, these two birds are developing in different directions in order to differentiate themselves and find their own place in the world. Until they are no longer competing, there will be a high amount of stress in the family.


Makes you say "Wow, what a cool bird". I'm so glad some lunatic imported Starlings from Europe. This bird has decided that he doesn't want kids, and is going to seek fulfillment in a different way, perhaps artistically. Likes kids, but would rather be a 'cool uncle'.

Gray Catbird
Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NYC, NY, USA
July 2015

This Gray Catbird is really a baby, and as such has not developed any descernable personality yet. Bares a vaguely concerned and confused look most of the time. Experiences a muted and muffled version of our own reality.

Gray Catbird is really making something of himself. Time is money, show me the numbers, let's reorganize to optimize our marketshare. Might be successful, but has lost track of the ability to see the world as a place of beauty. On auto-pilot, for now. Some things that we knew as a baby, we forget.