Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!vsi1!teda!jeffy
From: jeffy@teda.UUCP (Jeffrey Youngstrom)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: OUTDOOR:Help with identification
Message-ID: <21421@teda.UUCP>
Date: 27 Feb 91 19:02:27 GMT
Lines: 54


Heya,
	I'm new to bird watching and to this newsgroup.

	The main thing I'm looking for is a book along the same lines
	as Botanical and Entomological identification guides I've seen
	in the past which provide a series of questions about the
	specimen in question leading you along a decision tree with the
	eventual outcome (in a perfect world :-) of a positive
	identification.  Are there books like this for birds?  (Titles,
	I need titles! :-)

	Anyway, the bird I saw yesterday walking around in the grass
	common area at my apartment complex (This is San Francisco Bay
	area) eating something out of the grass was about the size of a
	large Robin and about the shape of a young chicken (minimal
	tail, and stocky), jet black chest, rich brown back and wings
	with black speckles and a bright yellow-orange beak.  Legs
	were, I think, black.  I leafed through my Field Guide to
	Western Birds but didn't find anything that looked likely.
	Anybody know?

	And while I'm wasting bandwidth, any of you Bay Area types have
	a phone number or address for a local Audobon chapter, or other
	local birding group?

	I've gotten attracted to this since I started walking to work,
	and have seen lots of birds I do recognize, and lots more I
	don't.  It would be great to find either a book where I could
	figure it out myself, or a group of people willing to share
	their knowledge.  (In the last couple of months I've consistently
	seen several Common Egrets in the canal along which I walk, a
	Burrowing Owl lives along there too.  This week there's been a
	pair of Mallards who seem to have established a residence, last
	week I saw a Red Tail Hawk being chased by a blackbird (quite a
	funny sight!), loads of Redwing Blackbirds making lots of noise
	in the spring-like weather we've been having lately.  A couple
	of months ago I scared up a Pheasant on the walk, and one really
	Bizarre sight on a cold rainy day back in December, a bright
	yellow Parakeet looking bird trying unsuccessfully to convince
	a flock of blackbirds that he was one of them.  He was very tame,
	allowed me to get almost close enough to touch him, so I assume
	he escaped from some distraught INDOOR bird type.  I wish I could
	have caught him as he must have had a hard time of it in the freeze
	we had a week later.

	Anyway, I've babbled too long so I'll shut up.
	Keep those trip reports coming!

jeffy
--
Jeffrey Youngstrom ...!{decwrl,sun}!teda!jeffy or jeffy@altair.csustan.edu
Teradyne EDA  West  |  5155 Old Ironsides Drive  |  Santa Clara, CA  95054
        "I watch the sky instead of television." -- Marilyn Hacker