Baby bird season continues with a Western Kingbird nest I came across, up in a transmission tower. This was a new part of town for this bird for me, so I was excited to find them there. I also moved my bird bath, and took the opportunity to use my 200mm EF lens to photograph some regulars there (the female House Finch, and the Lesser Goldfinches). Other young birds include the Red-breasted Sapsucker and Cooper's Hawk, though the hawk is probably old enough to not be considered a "baby bird."
These photos are © 2026 Phil Thompson, all rights reserved.
My "birds in review" collages can be found here.
Signature
📄 hashes-2026-07-19-211556.txt
📄 hashes-2026-07-19-211556.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: 25bd53a4a49a94ca9aab8403d39c41241bd31babfeeac51438dc507b081eddf2
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9:31AM Thursday July 09, 2026
Red-breasted Sapsucker (Juvenile)
9:20AM Friday July 10, 2026
Western Kingbird (Juvenile), Western Kingbird
9:22AM Friday July 10, 2026
Western Kingbird (Juvenile), Western Kingbird
9:22AM Friday July 10, 2026
Western Kingbird (Juvenile), Western Kingbird
9:26AM Friday July 10, 2026
Western Kingbird (Juvenile), Western Kingbird
9:29AM Friday July 10, 2026
Turkey VultureI've been wanting to try a shot like this for a while. The Turkey Vulture is flying away and looking away from the camera here, so I'll have to keep trying.
8:03AM Saturday July 11, 2026
House Finch
8:03AM Saturday July 11, 2026
House Finch
8:03AM Saturday July 11, 2026
House Finch
8:17AM Saturday July 11, 2026
House Finch
8:17AM Saturday July 11, 2026
House Finch
2:24PM Saturday July 11, 2026
House Finch
2:24PM Saturday July 11, 2026
House Finch
2:33PM Saturday July 11, 2026
California Bumble Bee
2:36PM Saturday July 11, 2026
Lesser Goldfinch
2:36PM Saturday July 11, 2026
Lesser Goldfinch
2:37PM Saturday July 11, 2026
Lesser Goldfinch
2:37PM Saturday July 11, 2026
Lesser Goldfinch
9:53AM Monday July 13, 2026
Common Wood-Nymph
9:54AM Monday July 13, 2026
Common Wood-Nymph
9:54AM Monday July 13, 2026
Common Wood-Nymph
9:47AM Wednesday July 15, 2026
Cooper's HawkI used Lightroom Classic's "Remove" feature with the "use generative AI" box checked to remove a small stick near the bird's head.
9:47AM Wednesday July 15, 2026
Cooper's HawkI used Lightroom Classic's "Remove" without AI, and a few masks and cloned areas. It was a lot more work to remove the little stick. I'm not sure if photo metadata saying "AI was used" will be a concern in the future, but I'm worried it may disqualify photos (someday) that are uploaded to eBird or iNaturalist or elsewhere. I'm not sure whether to use AI to make minor cleanup faster or not. On the other hand, the entire photo was run through DxO PureRAW.
9:47AM Wednesday July 15, 2026
Cooper's Hawk
9:47AM Wednesday July 15, 2026
Cooper's Hawk
9:47AM Wednesday July 15, 2026
Cooper's Hawk
6:55AM Thursday July 16, 2026
Western Sandpiper
6:55AM Thursday July 16, 2026
Western Sandpiper
7:11AM Thursday July 16, 2026
Red-winged Blackbird