Challenge: What bird matches the feather? [burnsteem100]
Back on August 2, my wife discovered a feather while we were walking through the yard. Here it is:
I asked the AIs what kind of feather it is, and they said probably a Great Horned Owl. I wasn't convinced, but I posted it on iNaturalist as an "Owl" and I figured I'd let the community take over from there. The community identifiers there said that it's not from an owl at all, but rather a Red-tailed Hawk.
Rewind to June 25 when my wife discovered a different feather in almost the exact same spot. It's here:
I hadn't done anything with that feather until last night when I asked the AIs about it. Meta AI said Great Horned Owl again, Claude said some kind of hawk - possibly a Red-shouldered Hawk, and Gemini said Wild Turkey. When I told the AIs about the August 2 feather, they all updated their guesses to "probably a Red-tailed Hawk".
Maybe, but I'm not sure. To me - knowing almost nothing about feather identification, those two feathers look pretty dissimilar. I'm thinking the AIs aren't very good at identifying bird feathers yet.
This time, Claude also told me about a potentially useful site for comparing feather photos: featherbase. Here are some comparison links from featherbase.
Before I post this one to iNaturalist, I thought I'd let the Steem community give it a try. What do you think? Was the feather in this second photo from a Red-tailed Hawk, a Great Horned Owl, a Red-shouldered Hawk, a Wild Turkey, or some other bird?
Unless otherwise specified in the text, all photos above were taken by me with a (handheld) Nikon P1000 camera. I'm sharing them under the CC BY 4.0 license (share & adapt freely with attribution to the original source).


Vote this comment if you think the June 25 photo is a Red-tailed hawk feather.
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Vote this comment if you think the June 25 photo is a Red-shouldered hawk feather.
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Vote this comment if you think the June 25 photo is a Wild Turkey feather.
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Vote this comment if you think the June 25 photo is a Great Horned Owl feather.
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Vote this comment if you think the June 25 photo is a feather from something else.
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