Birders ahoy

April 28, 2019 10:07 PM

I'm making a book for my friend's kids and have a spot-the-bird page (key). I wonder if you birders could tell me if I've sinned against nature too badly in the relative sizes of the birds. These are native and non-native Southern California birds. Thanks!
posted by pH Indicating Socks to Pets & Animals (11 answers total)

The only one that stands out to me is the American Goldfinch. It looks almost as big as the Rock Pigeon. Also, you should specify it's an American Goldfinch, as there are other species of goldfinches in CA. It would probably be good to do that with American Crow and American Robin, too, even though there aren't other species of crows or robins in that part of the country. One other note -- most birding-related publications choose to capitalize species names, though it's not a solid consensus. There are times when it creates ambiguity if you don't -- not all yellow warblers are Yellow Warblers.
posted by jkent at 2:26 AM on April 29, 2019

My initial impression (birder, but not is the US, fwiw) was that the heron was too small; but on balance maybe it’s more that the red-tailed hawk is too big. RTH should be significantly smaller than Golden Eagle and GB Heron. Maybe the crow could be a bit bigger, too?
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 2:40 AM on April 29, 2019

I mean, I don’t want to get too nit-picky, because I think this is such a great project and you don’t need to be super precise, but the other thing that throws the scale a bit is the comparison with the children. A Golden Eagle has at least a 6 foot wingspan, and a GB Heron is nearly as wide. So they would both be noticeably larger if they actually spread their wings next to a child.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 2:58 AM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

The hummingbirds are probably at least 50% larger than they should be; but they may be hard to identify if they get much smaller. The House Finch should be a bit smaller as well; in reality, they're about the same size as House Sparrows.

I'll also second jkent's comment about the American Goldfinch; in real life, they're a bit smaller than House Sparrows. And I agree with Blockworth Snout that the scale of the Great Blue Heron is too small.
posted by Johnny Assay at 4:21 AM on April 29, 2019

If you want the little guys to scale, you could show them under a magnifying glass in the key.
posted by kate4914 at 4:31 AM on April 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

I agree that the one that stands out the most for being the wrong size is the goldfinch.
posted by Redstart at 6:00 AM on April 29, 2019

I think the mockingbird needs to be bigger, like the size of the starling at least. Of course then the gulls and stuff in the foreground might need to be made larger in comparison.

Sorry this is not what you asked for, but another comment I have is that the House Sparrow does not look particularly House Sparrowy. If you'd told me it was some other bird only found on the west coast, I would totally believe you. Also, your crow looks kinda raveny to me. One way you can differentiate crows from ravens is that crows don't soar much, so a picture where the crow is actively beating its wings would be better. The tail shape on that guy also looks more raven than crow.
posted by gueneverey at 6:12 AM on April 29, 2019

I am not a birder, but I think this is amazing and would love to know more about what this book is because I love making custom books for me kid!

My actual potentially-useful comment is this: For those birds where the birders are saying they're too small relative to the kids, could you put them behind the dragons (there are some places that the birds overlap the dragon's slightly and the birds are in front). If you put them behind, they can be smaller because they're farther away. ANother thing you could do is decide which birds you need to be close (because they're too big e.g. hummingbirds) and which you need to be farther because they're too small (heron) and put them in different photoshop layers, then do a very slight blur on the layers you need to be farther away. Obviously it would have to be subtle so the birds are still identifiable.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:32 AM on April 29, 2019

Response by poster: This is fantastic feedback -- thank you! I will adjust the birds as you have instructed. I did get size info when I got the pictures, but what with moving everything around to try to make a pleasing composition things got out of whack. Thanks again!
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 7:26 AM on April 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

For what it's worth, yes there are size issues as noted above, but my eye also adapted by assuming they were different distances away.
posted by Stewriffic at 10:15 AM on April 29, 2019

The cooper's hawk looked small to me. (I assumed it was be a sharp-shinned hawk instead.)
posted by Stewriffic at 10:17 AM on April 29, 2019