Shoot 2025-01-31-080008 — philthompson.me

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Mandel

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Shoot 2025-01-31-080008

I made a short drive to see a Burrowing Owl, and another to see a Baikal Teal.

The Burrowing Owl had been reported on a farm field, so I wasn't too optimistic about finding it. I got there on a cold morning with some fog in the area. I was scanning the fields with my binoculars and stumbled across it peeking over the side of the road at me! I got a few photos of the top half of the owl, but as I slowly made my way around to try to get a clear view some thick fog rolled in! I returned a few days later and wasn't able to find it. It was a fun lifer to get to watch for a few minutes. I hope to see a group of them hunting one day.

There have been several Baikal Teal sightings in Oregon this month, which is exciting because this is a bird normally found in east Asia. I made the short drive and spent the morning, with a couple dozen other birders, trying to find this bird among a flock of 1,500 other ducks. Over the three hours I was there nobody spotted it. I took a few photos of the flock while at rest and while flying, but I couldn't find it among all the other ducks in the photos. Maybe someday an AI tool will be able to identify all the unique bird species in a photo of a flock.

Another recent highlight was an outing to photograph a very cooperative Costa's Hummingbird. On that same outing I was lucky to stumble across a Hammond's Flycatcher that was known to be in the area. This flycatcher is thousands of miles north of its normal winter range in central America!

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

Signature

📄 hashes-2025-01-31-080008.txt

📄 hashes-2025-01-31-080008.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: ba227e7cf77b4b4847db3c076e28e2498bc950432a9ec3ba83a545c5f560d0f9

view the ALGO tx on explorer.perawallet.app: DM6TW23CSSFYZVXMHOYA5EICJGU2DKFGZTZP3Q6AOMRO7RMTDXVA

8:48AM Friday January 24, 2025

Burrowing Owl

8:48AM Friday January 24, 2025

Burrowing Owl

8:48AM Friday January 24, 2025

Burrowing Owl

8:49AM Friday January 24, 2025

Burrowing Owl

8:49AM Friday January 24, 2025

Burrowing Owl

8:52AM Friday January 24, 2025

Tundra Swan

8:57AM Friday January 24, 2025

8:59AM Friday January 24, 2025

Burrowing Owl

8:59AM Friday January 24, 2025

Burrowing Owl

9:59AM Friday January 24, 2025

Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted x Red-shafted)

9:59AM Friday January 24, 2025

Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted x Red-shafted)

10:02AM Friday January 24, 2025

Tundra Swan

10:02AM Friday January 24, 2025

Tundra Swan

9:32AM Monday January 27, 2025

Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintail

9:32AM Monday January 27, 2025

Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintail

10:03AM Monday January 27, 2025

Red-tailed Hawk

10:14AM Monday January 27, 2025

Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintail

10:31AM Monday January 27, 2025

Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintail

8:23AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Costa's Hummingbird

8:23AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Costa's Hummingbird

8:34AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Costa's Hummingbird

8:34AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Costa's Hummingbird

8:34AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Costa's Hummingbird

8:34AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Costa's Hummingbird

8:58AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Common Goldeneye

8:58AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Common Goldeneye

9:05AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Ring-billed Gull

9:05AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Ring-billed Gull

9:05AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Ring-billed Gull

9:05AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Ring-billed Gull

9:09AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Western x Glaucous-winged Gull (hybrid)

9:09AM Thursday January 30, 2025

Western x Glaucous-winged Gull (hybrid)

The orbital is fairly pink, but for a pure Glaucous-winged the bill has too much of an orange-ish Western color, the bill has too much of a bulge at the gonys, and the wingtips are too dark.