by Matthew Cobb
Martin Stevens, aka @SensoryEcology, who posted yesterday’s moth/tree ogre quiz, just tw**ted another camouflage quiz pic, of a Mozambique nightjar. Click to see a hi-res version, if you think that will help you. We’ve previously featured @ProjectNightjar, which Martin is involved in, here and a particularly interesting piece here. BTW I have not the slightest idea where the damn bird is!
I found it! Amazing! I’m usually terrible at these things!
Is it obviously a bird when you look at it? I’ve seen one or two things that could be it’s head but I can’t be sure.
Yeah, nah. I’m not sure at all. I can see something that looks like a bird but may be a rock on the right towards the bottom. And there’s another bird shaped object on the left which is somewhat smaller. I can’t get the picture resolution to the point where I can really tell.
Bottom right corner?
I think so too. Facing to the left with the head behind a bit of grass and the tail at the base of the twig.
Ignore the above please as I repost my comment under the intended one. I literally never comment on this site and the day I decide to I mess it up. Oy.
It may be at the left-right centre of the picture, and about one third of the way up – there’s what looks like a head with eye and beak, facing to the right and slightly away from the camera, and the back sloping down to the left. It is easier to see at the maximum resolution – if it is that, because I still can’t fully convince myself. But I can’t see anything in the bottom right, unlike others above.
Smack dead centre, to the left of the base of twig.
I think so too. Facing to the left with the head behind a bit of grass and the tail at the base of the twig.
Bingo!
+1
Actually, I think it’s facing somewhat to the right, with the beak pointing slightly upwards, against the black twig. Nestled behind what looks like a small rock. The characteristic mottled tail and lighter breast are discernible.
This seems to be the most obvious possibility to me as well. And, as a bonus, it conforms to the “they probably aimed the camera right at the subject” principle.
Now I’m second-guessing myself… I see what you’re seeing too! What I thought was a flattish rock! Could this photo be of a mother and a chick?!
I agree. 🙂
I haven’t found the nightjar yet, but I did spot the rabbit and the baby penguin.
Much easier for me than yesterday’s moth, but then, though not much of a bird watcher myself, I have been on many trips with a father and brother who were/are very skilled.
Upper right, lower part of the light-brown, twiggy bush. Nightjars blend into bark really well and the bottom part of the denuded bush seems a little too thick to my eyes.
This is torture!
Nightjars typically lay on branches, so this on is on the fallen branch or tree to the left of the brown root mound.
Calling that image high-res is considerably less than accurate.
Here’s where I think it is, though the resolution is so low I can’t be sure:
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/614/4xqw.png
Hopefully WordPress won’t turn that into a big embedded image.
Calling this a “camouflage quiz” is likewise inaccurate. At such low res, it’s not the bird’s camouflage that prevents us from seeing it.
My problem is that once I think I see it, I have great difficulty unseeing it to look elsewhere. For what it’s worth, about 1/3 up from bottom and 1/3 in from right–on a twig and looking towards the viewers is what it appears to me.
@Brian Engler “My problem is that once I think I see it, I have great difficulty unseeing it…”
Ye God’s man! I think you’ve unraveled creationism at last!
@Ken Phelps “Ye God’s man! I think you’ve unraveled creationism at last!”
… or pareidolia at least. 😉
Hands up who saw the gorilla.
+1
[Panto voice :] BEHIND YOU!
Oh, no it isn’t!
It is clear that humans did not evolve to be specialist nightjar hunters.
This would have been harder if it weren’t common practice to center the shot on the subject. 🙂