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Sloppy annotations by me.

February 2013.

So this is going to be a little hard to explain...

About two or three years ago, I started getting more and more interested in birds. Initially, this started with gulls, raptors, and vultures as I was deeply inspired by their soaring flight. But over time, as I've observed birds and shared in the passion of other birdlovers, I've learned more and more about all kinds of birds. And I've often had to get help from my birding friends in figuring out what kinds of birds I'm seeing and I've definitely made some dumb mistakes before.

Well, this brings me back to the current submission. A friend of mine, , recently took part in the Great Backyard Bird Count but had trouble identifying some of the birds he saw, so he took pictures instead and I offered to help him out if I could. Amazingly, I managed to pretty confidently identify them all and correct him on a couple mistakes I've made before myself. So I guess I'm pretty proud of that. Actually, I've even seen all of these birds myself, despite living in a different part of the country. About the only things that confuse me a bit are the gulls, and I am pretty sure I'd have no trouble with those if the shot were a bit closer and clearer. I see some that look like herring gulls, but they have yellow legs it seems, and it's hard to tell if there's really red on their beaks. It might be black and they're actually ring-bills - that's my tentative guess anyway.

Of course, I am still not perfect. When I first saw that absolutely gorgeous bird in the bottom right corner, I thought it was a bird I was unfamiliar with, something that lives in Louisiana but not around where I live in Maryland. Maybe a cuckoo of some sort or the like. The orange eyes were hard to find a match for though... until I came across a mockingbird. "It can't be a mocking bird - I know what those look like," I thought. Oops. No, it's definitely a mockingbird. :-D