Shoot 2023-07-06-203607 — philthompson.me

Birds
Mandel

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Shoot 2023-07-06-203607

I heard a new bird sound while on a bike path, so I stopped to check it out. The sound reminded me somewhat of a Common Nighthawk, which might be why my ears perked up. It was nearing dusk, when Nighthawks would be expected, but the Merlin app identified the sound as a Northern Rough-winged Swallow. It was kind of dark out but I was able to see some wide-winged swallows flying around, without any forking in the tail, but I couldn't see the colors of the birds and I didn't have my camera on my person.

I returned a couple days later and was easily able to find them again. There were at least 3 perched in a tree overhanging the river. They weren't moving much, and constantly calling, which I found odd, until I saw a parent bird fly up to feed a perched one. I had been looking at young swallows waiting for a meal to be delivered. This was a fun lifer because I found it myself (after noticing a new-sounding bird), was able to find them again on a different day, and because some were sitting still (rare for a swallow) allowing me to photograph them.

My "birds in review" collages can be found here.

Signature

📄 hashes-2023-07-06-203607.txt

📄 hashes-2023-07-06-203607.txt.sig

The above hashes-<date>.txt file contains SHA-256 hashes of all the photos from this shoot. The hashes-<date>.txt.sig is a signature of that hashes file, created with my PGP key. The signature file itself was written to both the Bitcoin Cash and Algorand blockchains, in the OP RETURN and Note fields respectively, using the transactions below. In short, this proves that these photos and the signature both existed at the time the transactions were written to the Bitcoin Cash and Algorand blockchains. This blog post has more details.

view the BCH tx on blockchair.com: c9812d4ae2b1737d56df240c63651aa4d45a19a36356c171f3fd0460dcbab150

view the ALGO tx on explorer.perawallet.app: OVDD5UZC5NF7DCMIWJQKGO324RKTZRAFJCPUBIAW2KRVYEUI2VTQ

7:23AM Sunday June 25, 2023

unknown

This was shot on a previous birding outing, where I was looking for a Grasshopper Sparrow. This didn't look right to me for Grasshopper Sparrow, or even Savannah Sparrow which are much more common. I later learned people had seen Vesper Sparrow at this location, but again I'm not sure whether this image of this bird shows enough field marks to qualify as a Vesper Sparrow.