Shoot 2025-08-14-080830 — philthompson.me

Birds
Mandel

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Shoot 2025-08-14-080830

I went up to the mountains to look for some new species to photograph. I got my first photos of a Clark's Nutcracker, but didn't study well enough ahead of time to properly be on the lookout for all the expected species. Toward the end of the trip I saw a distant small bird which turned out to be a Cassin's Finch, an uncommon but expected species for the area. It was so far away and hard to see I am not counting it as a lifer.

I also made a visit to the coast, where the most interesting bird photographed was probably a Wandering Tattler with a pair of leg bands. I'll be reporting the bird to the appropriate banding organization.

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

Signature

📄 hashes-2025-08-14-080830.txt

📄 hashes-2025-08-14-080830.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: dcb273f44546d84ad971b9d4fe948172f00ae337ab888cc9ff265ddc2e998f1c

view the ALGO tx on explorer.perawallet.app: C2IR4MAYO4JNQJ3NFVJTUNTSE2NT4EHISTMBLC5VIXUTM4NJ2D5Q

7:07AM Wednesday July 30, 2025

Virginia Rail (Juvenile), Wilson's Snipe

9:28AM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Chipping Sparrow (Juvenile)

9:28AM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Chipping Sparrow (Juvenile)

9:38AM Wednesday August 06, 2025

10:40AM Wednesday August 06, 2025

11:20AM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Clark's Nutcracker

11:20AM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Clark's Nutcracker

11:20AM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Clark's Nutcracker

I was targeting a photo of a Clark's Nutcracker for this trip, and had only taken a few distant blurry ones (since deleted) when I heard them again nearby. I followed them a little ways to try to get a better photo. I found them taking turns bathing in a small pond. Photo lifer!

11:20AM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Clark's Nutcracker

11:56AM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Canada Jay (Juvenile)

I stopped to look at another bird (a Golden-crowned Kinglet I think) and saw this Jay silently nibbling on something up in a tree. I've only seem this species once before. I'll have to stop to look at the more common species more often: I would have walked right by otherwise!

1:39PM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Cassin's Finch

A terrible photo, but it shows a bill that's more elongated and less stout than a Purple Finch would have.

1:39PM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Cassin's Finch

1:39PM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Cassin's Finch

1:39PM Wednesday August 06, 2025

Cassin's Finch

Another bad photo, but shows some field marks to distinguish from Purple Finch: no real reddish/purple color on flanks, folded wing, or tail; very plain and pale flanks; folded wing also shows pale feather edges creating a scaled appearance.