identifying

Female Broad-Tailed Hummingbird Feeding, Hovering And Resting

By Mia McPherson|2021-05-11T14:53:27-05:00May 8th, 2020|Categories: Birds, Broad-tailed Hummingbirds, Tooele County, Utah, West Desert|Tags: back view, Broad-tailed Hummingbird, canyons, Cornus sericea, feeding, female, flower, flowering shrub, grasses, hovering, hummingbird, hummingbirds, identifying, key features, mountains, nectar, Red Osier Dogwood, resting, Ribes cereum, Selasphorus platycercus, spotlight, tail, Utah, Wax Currant|

A few days ago I photographed my first of the season Broad-tailed Hummingbird and I was elated that the bird was a female.

American Bittern – Juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron Comparison

By Mia McPherson|2023-12-18T11:05:09-06:00October 21st, 2016|Categories: American Bitterns, Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Birds, Black-crowned Night Herons, Box Elder County, Utah|Tags: adult, American Bittern, bittern, bitterns, Black-crowned Night Heron, Botaurus lentiginosus, comparing, comparison, herons, identification, identifying, immature, juvenile, marsh, night heron, night herons, Nycticorax nycticorax, wading birds, wetlands, young|

To the untrained eye American Bitterns and Black-crowned Night Herons can be confused so I thought I'd visually compare the two species with other keys to aid in their identification.