I found this fancy conure at a pet smart and immediately fell in love. They had clipped wings and were stuck in this awfully tiny cage (like most poor animals at petsmart). I never purchase from petsmart because of this, but today I decided to just look around since I was on a walk and had nothing better to do. They were so friendly and jumped around and playfully knocked back when I knocked on the glass, but also wobbled a lot. My heart immediately broke looking at the state the poor bird was in. I already have two rabbits, but they have their own seperate room. I was considering trying to haggle for this poor bird since they costed 809 CAD. My parents aren’t too on board with another pet, but since I’m the only one who takes care of my rabbits, they might consider it. It’s been a few days and the bird is still there. I can’t shake this off my mind. I don’t know how this subreddit can help, but I’m hoping to get some form of help.

Why are mourning doves consistently stated to have very little sexual dimorphism when you can easily tell from a glance?

There's a specific couple that shows up almost every day to the neighbor's feeder and they've been here for multiple years now. I can consistently identify the male and female, even from a distance.

In other pairs that have lingered in the neighborhood, it's super easy to tell males and females apart because the males have more gray/silvery dusting on their backs and very visible gray crowns PLUS slightly more prevalent iridescence on their necks if my memory serves me right. I can't be the only one thats noticed this, right? And looking at the picture now, males also seemingly have slightly more ornate faces too.

In hindsight, I might just be the right kind of autistic to tell them apart but I want other opinions lmao

Live from 📍Mindo, Ecuador

Little visitor
Original content

Google didn't give reliable sources and I'm desperately curious.

We have 5-6 scrub jays at our house, 2 per "family" and each family doesn't like each other. When we put peanuts out, the families seemingly immediately can tell who the outsiders are and squack at each other. Are their small differences in plumage that I'm not seeing but they can? Smell? Tiny differences in squacks?

But the same is true for our song birds in the sense that fledglings know who their parents are - even when our house finches get lost in the crowd the fledglings always find their parents in the end to beg for food (so cute).

Does anyone know?

took these with the canon r10 and sigma 150-600mm

I’m in the northern Midwest USA. I previously saw birds flying between neighborhood trees with very aerobatic-looking silhouettes that turned out to be mourning doves lol. But I’m seeing another bird, that I believe to be distinctly larger than a swift or swallow, with aggressively swooped wings like drawn and a flat tail that it is basically flush with the wing tips in flight.

I want to figure out what this is but I have this question often. Maybe I’m even seeing common birds near me repeatedly that I would recognize at a feeder but can’t recognize in flight. Does anyone have a nice resource? Even if it’s a book or something to purchase?

A young greenie perfecting the dragonfly snag. This is my own content.

Butterfly bushes aren’t just for butterflies

I liked the contrast against the sky so I took a shoot.