Welcome to /c/birding, a community for people who like birds, birdwatching and birding in general! Feel free to post your birding photos or just photos of birds you found in general, but please follow the rules as outlined below.
This should go without saying, but please be nice to one another. No petty insults, no bigotry, no harassment, hate speech,nothing of that sort! Depending on the severity, you'll either only get your comment removed and a warning or your comment will be removed and you will be banned from /c/birding.
This is a community for posting content of birds, nothing else. Please keep the posts related to birding or birds in general.
When posting photos or videos that you did not take, please always credit the original photographer! Link to the original post on social media as well, if there is one.
Absolutely no AI-generated content is allowed! I know it has become quite difficult to tell whether or not something is AI-generated or not, but please make sure that whatever you post is not AI-generated. If it is, your post will be removed. If you continously post AI-generated content, you'll be banned from /c/birding (but it's obviously okay if you post AI-generated stuff once or twice without knowing you did so).
Please provide rough information location, if possible. This is a more loosely-enforced rule, especially because it is sometimes not possible to provide a location. But if you post a photo you took yourself, please provide a rough location and date of the sighting.
Great Lakes region, USA. April 2026.
Every time I hear a killdeer I track it down to see if I can get the infamous riding shot. I thought it might happen here, but no. This was a group of three killdeer roaming this open field for food.
Are these the same as sandpipers? As a fellow Great Lakes resident.
They're not the same. Both birds belong to the same order (Charadriiformes), basically that just means they're shorebirds.
no Killdeer are plovers, but I guess that only helps if you know what plovers are... they're both shorebirds, if that helps
When I was a kid, my hometown was ~5-10 miles from one of the U.S. Great Lakes. I road my bike to the library one day, checked out some books, and set up outside in an old disused train station that had been converted into a sort of park. That parts relevant because of the piled up mound of rocks that made the track foundation meeting the grass.
As I read, I noticed a bird landed pretty close to me, I was thrilled to be watching them! But then I noticed it seemed to be limping, it's wing was broken. There was a vet not to far, so I went into my backpack for a sweatshirt, and figured I might be able to safely wrap him up, and take him to the vet, who probably knew the number of a wildlife rehabilitation center or something.
As I approached with my sweatshirt though, it took off! Must not have been that hurt after all... I kept reading. The bird showed up again, it must not have been able to fly to far! I tried again, again it took off... repeat for hours until eventually, having made very little progress on my book, I went home.
... It was around a decade later I learned about the "broken wing display". He was probably as confused as I was.
Isn't it cool? What an interesting defense mechanism. They said, "screw building a nest that's defended from anything. We'll just fake like we're wounded to lure predators away from our nest."
TIL that Kildeer is more than just a township in Illinois.
They are a type of Plover.
Yup, a shorebird. One that's commonly found away from the shore too.
Infamous riding kildeer shot?
During mating they'll stack. The male hops on the female's back.
oh so you're a lil freaky then
Great tits. Dickcissels. Boobies.
You have met bird enthusiasts, right? They're all freaky.
Mind you that I am specifically excluding myself from this category, the guy with a penguin for his profile pic, for no particular reason whatsoever.
Were all a Lil freaky here