Greetings All

Somehow, I feel we are in danger of wandering into arguing semantics and esoteria, but I think one point needs to be made.

Books are written on identification, and they often discuss subjective "jizz" differences between species, such as fierce vs cute, flat headed vs round headed, etc. These work well in the field and are often very useful. They are the combination of thousands of images that your brain gathers as you watch the bird(s).

These marks can be very dangerous when used with photos alone. Indeed, the Kent bird looks "fierce" in some photos and relatively "cute" in others. Even a dozen photos can be inadequate to relate a bird's true "jizz." I've seen this in ID articles wherein a species is supposed to look "long-necked" and you find multiple photos in which the bird looks anything but. That's because a single (or a few) photos can be quite misleading. The internet has allowed us to evaluate a great number of interesting and confusing birds via looking at photos, but subjective "jizz" marks must be used very carefully in such birds. I put much more weight on the impressions of folks that actually observed the bird.

I also believe that to truly know a species' jizz, one needs to know the species well in the field, not just from photos. Just my opinion.

Cheers
Steven Mlodinow
Everett WA