A Diabolical Quick Quiz

By Corey July 12, 2009 14 comments

All of the pictures here were taken at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge today.  Please leave your guesses as to what species are depicted in the first two shots in the comments.  For the third picture I am just asking for the total number of species in the picture but if you want to list them, well, knock yourself out!  Good luck!  An answer post will be up by the end of the week.

Quiz Picture 1

Quiz Picture 2

Quiz Picture 3

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About the Author

Corey

Corey

Corey is a lifelong upstate New Yorker who recently took the plunge and moved to the city. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list and broke the magical 300 barrier in New York State in 2007 by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative. He lives near Forest Park in Queens with Daisy, their son, Desmond, and their two indoor cats, Hunter and B.B.

14 Responses to “A Diabolical Quick Quiz”

  1. 1. Great Blue Heron
    2. Great Egret
    3. 5 Species (Herring Gull,Ring-billed Gull, Common Tern, Gull-billed Tern, Short-billed Dowitcher)

  2. Agree with Great Blue on #1. I’m leaning towards Least Bittern on #2. Also get 5 on #3 but I see Laughing Gulls, Common Terns, Forster’s Terns, Least Tern and Short-billed Dowitcher.

  3. Forgot about Laughing Gulls, since they don’t occur where I am… They are easy to forget, but they are common there.

  4. I am guessing the following species:

    #1: Little Blue Heron
    #2: Black-crowned Night-heron
    #3: really difficult!

    I can see
    Laughing Gull
    Least Tern
    Forster’s Tern
    Dowitchers (presumably Short-billed)
    and then there may be a few Common Terns and a single Sandwich Tern but both calls are hard to make at that resolution.

  5. Aaand, there is one tern I presume is a Gull-billed Tern, but I am really not sure if there are any Common Terns on the pic.

  6. Okay, 6 species on pic # 3:

    Laughing Gull
    (Short-billed) Dowitcher
    Least Tern
    Forster’s Tern
    Sandwich Tern
    Gull-billed Tern

  7. Aaaah, this is so mean: there’s half a gull head in the foreground that might be an American Herring Gull.

    I suppose I give up now…

  8. Well, I will say that so far that one of the first two ahve been answered correctly and no one has correctly guessed the number of species…so I’ll wait a bit for an answer post…

  9. 1. Great Blue Heron

    2. Black-crowned Night Heron

    3. 6 species (Laughing Gull, Forster’s Tern, Least Term, Gull-billed Tern, Short Dowitchers, Ring-billed Gull, and there may or may not be a Great Kiskadee in the bottom middle)

  10. Wait, change the first one to Tricolored Heron, but only if you have them up there.

  11. #2 Black-crowned night heron for sure, Laughing Gull, and that Herring? Gull in the foreground that’s blurry, as well as Least, Forsters and Gull-billed Terns. I don’t think I see any commons… and the SB dowitchers.

  12. So no-one shares my thought of there being a Sandwich Tern just to the left and behind the Least?
    Hmmm…
    Additionally, a few of these small blobs on the sand look a lot like some woodpecker.

  13. Furthest back bird a Bonaparte’s Gull or similar and 2nd dowitcher from the left a Long-billed for 7? Probably should stop guessing unless there’s a better shot available.

  14. I also though there might be a Long Dowitcher in there, especially the second from the left since it looks a little hunch-backed, but I think it’s just the angle.

    I see a couple darker-billed terns in there, perhaps the ones Jochen says may be Sandwich, but the head doesn’t look flat enough for SATE, so they could be Commons. I’m thinking specifically of one in the bottom left behind two Forster’s.

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