New to me

A brown bird, something like a blackbird in size and shape, landed on our back lawn after breakfast this morning, and stayed there long enough for me to be able to take a good look with the monocular. Still not sure what it was, I asked Google, to be taken to the not very helpful RSPB page on thrushes. With RSPB being a very rich charity with a rather poor web presence, about whom I moan from time to time.

But then, somehow, I found myself at reference 1, which was new to me. A site which appeared to contain lots of labelled pictures of all kinds of animals and birds - and I dare say trees and flowers too. What it could do today, was offer lots of labeled pictures of female blackbirds, showing off their variety, their variations and confirming that this was what had just been on our back lawn. Which all seemed much more reliable than just asking Bing or Google for images on the search key 'female blackbirds'.

An outfit which has been around for fifteen years or more. And despite claims that '... In 2009 Arkive was named one of The Telegraph's top 10 best video websites and The Times’ top 10 best education sites (the UK’s two leading quality newspapers) ...', I don't think I have used them before. Where have I been hiding?

PS 1: one downside: on my laptop, the site seems prone to generating server errors which mean that one has to go back to the beginning.

PS 2: two downside: I think you have to know roughly what you are looking for. So if you think something is a female blackbird you can check easily enough. Not yet tried feeding properties of unknown brown birds into their search engine.

Reference 1: https://www.arkive.org/.