Seeking online sources for Costa Rica bird photos (1 Viewer)

Will be going to Costa Rica in March, and have found that the best way to learn the birds beforehand is to give myself a photo quiz via a slide show. This is close to field experience in that you suddenly have a bird before you and have to figure out the ID, or at least the key possibilities, as quickly as possible. (If you have other recommendations as to how to learn many new birds at once feel free to recommend here also).

To make the photo quiz work I need lots of photos that meet one main criteria: the file name needs to be the true identity of the bird, to a high degree of certainty, since the quiz answer/file name appears in the upper left hand corner of my screen on the slideshow. Have already found two good online sources of such photos here:

http://www.angelfire.com/bc/gonebirding/birdimages.html
http://www.costaricabirdingtours.com/birdlifephotos.html

However, would be great to have even more photos, especially of the harder to ID or infrequently photographed birds. If you know of any web sources with at least 30 such downloadable photos (I use these for personal use only of course) and no fewer than 10 on a single webpage (so I can download them all at once), I would appreciate a link.

Jim

Hi, Jim - I had barely begun the same process, getting easily stuck on how to add a sound file (from Xeno-canto) to the picture. Previously, I tried flipping through Stiles and Skutch but found that placement on the page and association with nearby pictures gave me clues as to the bird's identity that of course wouldn't be there to help in the field. Plus, no sound.
I've also tried copying single images of Garrigues and Dean's, editing out the names and putting them in a slide show. A little tedious; once again no sound.
I'm not as skilled in front of the computer as I'd like to be so the project has more frustration than appeal at this point.

Greg Dodge made a 10 location DVD quiz that was fun but limited to 30 birds in the Costa Rica section:
http://www.amazon.com/QUIZ-BIRDS-Birding-Hot-Spots/dp/B000FJHFRC
I emailed him to compliment his work on that DVD. He said it was a labor of love and did not feel that anyone would use it more than once. However, I have watched all of it many times and think a expanded version would be very popular.

Tom Friedel's site has a much more extensive quiz that goes beyond mere identification:
http://www.BirdPhotos.com/photos/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=5926&g2_quiz=start0

Then there is:
http://birdingcr.com/3/quiz.htm

This site helps you create your own:
http://www.thayerbirding.com/GoldEdition/MyQuizzes/tabid/958/Default.aspx

I'll probably use all of them before spending any more time creating my own. But if you are sucessful, maybe you could find a way to share the quiz. I can use all the help I can get.

Good luck -
Steve

Jim,
I generally feel that the Birdforum database have photos that are reasonably well id'ed, much better than most other web sources. The copyright notice says: "All photos posted in the gallery, and uploaded to the forums, are the property of the original photographer and must not be reproduced in any format without the express written permission of the photographer."

My personal, non-legal, interpretation of that is that you automatically download if you view such a photo, so as long as you use this to quiz yourself, no-body would know. However, making such a quiz available to others would necessitate permission from each and every photographer.

The best way to search the BF gallery is through the link at the bottom of each Opus page.
Niels

Gateway Costa Rica also has an excellent set of images of uncommon species although I'm not sure if you can download them.
http://www.costaricagateway.com/gallery/index.html

Although not as extensive, you can also find a fair number of species at my blog.

We have a few photographers listed (mainly wildlife so far as not populated those pages yet) http://www.fatphotographer.net/links_geo/america_central/costa_rica.html

Thanks all for the excellent links and suggestions. I was not aware of most of this. With these links I will have over 1000 photos of Costa Rican birds, and the quiz seems almost like virtual birding because just like birding I'm never quite sure what will pop up.

Hamhed said:

I'll probably use all of them before spending any more time creating my own. But if you are sucessful, maybe you could find a way to share the quiz. I can use all the help I can get.

Click to expand...

Steve,

My quiz is not nearly as sophisticated as what you are attempting. It is just a simple photo quiz -- see the bird and try to name it. You can reproduce it easily by going to the sites linked to in this thread, downloading the photo files to a folder, and then creating a random slideshow using a photo management program (I use the freeware IrfanView). The "answers" appear as the filename in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.

By the way, as you probably know, there are various ways to download multiple photos at one time, so you don't have to save photos individually. In Firefox you can click on the icon just to the left of the URL and go to the media tab. This is sufficient where the photos themselves appear on one webpage. There are also Firefox add-ons such as "down them all". This helps where only links to the photos appear on a single page -- as is the case with Richard Garrigues' site.

Best,
Jim

J. Moore said:

Steve,

My quiz is not nearly as sophisticated as what you are attempting. It is just a simple photo quiz -- see the bird and try to name it.


Best,
Jim

Click to expand...

Well, that's a first - being accused of being "sophisticated"! 8-P

The sounds would be important for what I'm trying to accomplish. "Trying" being the operative word here. Thanks for the download tips. I'll be calling our tech help for our Mac today to see if they can provide some insight.

It seems someone with tech savvy could probably put a CR bird quiz site together in a reasonable amount of time, with multiple pictures of same species, sounds and range maps as id tips.
In the meantime, I'm not counting on Santa Claus to get this up and running...


Steve

Thayer birding software does that for North America, but it does not seem they have gotten it off the ground for any other area.

Niels