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namu-the-orca ā Identifying yellow masked 'ploceus' weavers
Published: 2013-08-31 23:04:27 +0000 UTC; Views: 3241; Favourites: 112; Downloads: 0
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Description
This poster shows eleven African weavers of the Ploceus genus, old-world birds named for the crafty nests they weave into trees using strips of leaves. They can be a confusing bunch; all are yellow, all have a big black mask, and all look more or less the same at first glance. The species descriptions follow a fixed pattern: the first point is for markings (or lack thereof) on the back, the second for the shape of the mask, and the third for the amount of brown on the head and/or chest. Occasional fourth points elaborate on a further diagnostic feature.Related content
Comments: 43
I actually haven't commented on this yet (I think) but this was an immense help when identifying Weavers as Wikipedia lacks images of some of them, and those that it has aren't to good. But yeah, thanks so much for making this! Its a fantastic reference, and I often looked at it to make sure of ID's
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I'm very glad it's also of actual identification help - that was of course the main idea of this poster. Wiki indeed lacks good pictures of some species, but even the actual field guides may be very contradictory in terms of illustrations/descriptions. Do be noted that this is a very select group of weavers I've illustrated here; yellow, big black-masked and from Africa only. There's lots more similar species I couldn't put on here!
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Oh, this is super useful. I photographed some at a zoo last year and have noooooo idea which ones they are... we gave up trying to ID after a while XD
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Ahahaa, they all look the same at first glance, don't they? Had some pretty desperate moments myself when fishing out the reference pictures - didn't help that a lot of them are wrongly labelled 
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This looks like a very good reference! 
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Glad to hear that, thank you
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Thanks very much, Willem!
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I'd love to commission you for a tattoo of a goldfinch I've wanted for a longtime.Ā
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That'd be awesome! With a little bit of luck, things and projects will have calmed down a little bit for me so I might start opening up commissions then
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I will keep an eye out, if you open them please keep me in mind!
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If you could maybe send me a note, just with 'hey man you were gonna do some goldfinches for me!' then I can put that in the 'commissions' folder of my inbox - I'm looking through that before opening before commissions because someone else also 'reserved' a spot, so that'd be the best way to not forget you
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I will note you now!
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Thank you for an explicative and awesome good work! <3
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Thank you so much for watching and the comment; glad to know people enjoy
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Thanks, glad to hear you think so!
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You're welcome!
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Haha, yeah! Though the ploceus genus has about 60 different species, some of which are almost completely brown; yellow with green does seem to be the dominant colour scheme, though
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Well, yellow is nice and bright colour. I' glad you didn't draw all of those 60 ploceus species
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Glad to hear you think so!
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Oh, very awesome! I'll have to look at this more in depth later. 
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Thanks, glad to hear you like it! Weavers sure are incredibly diverse birds; in the whole ploceus genus alone there's already 60 different species, and all the weavers together (so that's plus the Quelas, Malimbe's, Sparrow weavers, Buffalo weavers, etc.) come to a grand total of 109 species! Birds have absolutely endless varieties.
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You're welcome! Oh, it's absolutely mind blowing! It's so much fun to learn about all that variety, though.
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Ahahaa, all us animal junkies addicted to finding out about differences between species and stuff XDĀ
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Lol, yup. X) That pretty much sums it up.
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Wow this is beautiful. I love your bird art and that it's realistic but not photo realistic paintings. These would be great in a bird book. You could illustrate field guides.
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Thank you; very glad to hear that 
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You're very welcome
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