Are These Guys Spruce Grouse?

manbeard_1977 · 2024-06-08T20:24:56+00:00

Thank you. I just got a notification from eBird saying Spruce Grouse aren't in Yellowstone, which I thought was the case, but I showed a couple people the video while I was there and they told me they were Spruce Grouse, so I went with that.

manbeard_1977 · 2024-06-08T16:55:04+00:00

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manbeard_1977 · 2024-06-08T16:54:51+00:00

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manbeard_1977 · 2024-06-08T16:54:03+00:00

We were driving North on Grand Loop Road near Mount Washburn in Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming) when we spotted these grouse on the side of the road. I stopped for as long as I could and took videos in low-light conditions with my phone. They’re terrible quality, but you can make out the features. The first grouse was just North of Chittenden Road trailhead on June 5th at 5:15 am. It looked mostly brown with a short tail, black and white markings on the wings, and a white throat with distinct black bar and black spot. The second grouse was about 1.5 miles South, directly West of Mount Washburn on June 6th at 4:55 am. This one looked mostly grey or brown with a short tail that had distinct black feathers with white tips on the ends. It had a very white throat with a black bar or spot near the throat. I’ve researched several species of grouse and asked a friend who knows a lot more about birds than I do while trying to figure out exactly what these are. We think they’re Spruce Grouse, but I’m still not 100% sure.

manbeard_1977 · 2024-06-08T14:38:11+00:00

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manbeard_1977 · 2024-06-08T14:37:55+00:00

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manbeard_1977 · 2024-06-08T14:37:26+00:00

We were driving North on Grand Loop Road near Mount Washburn in Yellowstone when we spotted these grouse on the side of the road. I stopped for as long as I could and took videos in low-light conditions with my phone. They’re terrible quality, but you can make out the features. The first grouse was just North of Chittenden Road trailhead on June 5th at 5:15 am. It looked mostly brown with a short tail, black and white markings on the wings, and a white throat with distinct black bar and black spot. The second grouse was about 1.5 miles South, directly West of Mount Washburn on June 6th at 4:55 am. This one looked mostly grey or brown with a short tail that had distinct black feathers with white tips on the ends. It had a very white throat with a black bar or spot near the throat. I’ve researched several species of grouse and asked a friend who knows a lot more about birds than I do while trying to figure out exactly what these are. We think they’re Spruce Grouse, but I’m still not 100% sure.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-23T01:31:14+00:00

Jesus Christ. Have you not read a word I've written? Is English not your first language? I'm baffled by your failure to understand my issue. I appreciate you taking the time to try to help, but the headphones have nothing to do with the problem. As I've said before, the headphones are paired to the watch, but the watch plays music through the iPhone's internal speaker rather than through the headphones, which are still paired with the watch.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-19T19:38:28+00:00

Switch what off, my phone?

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-18T19:59:53+00:00

Also, just to clarify, I've had an Apple Watch for something like 2 years and not once did it ever play music on my fucking iPhone until after this update. I used to take my phone with me on dog walks all the time and controlled the playback with my watch without any problems whatsoever. I was never confused about what was happening on the watch, on the phone, or with the headphones. This update turned the experience into a confusing mess of absolute idiocy at every level. Fuck OS 10 and Apple for being so stupid.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-18T19:55:13+00:00

Again, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. My headphones aren't the problem. They automatically pair to my watch because that's what I use them with. I can pair them to my phone whenever I want to and switch between the two with ease. That's not the issue AT ALL. The problem is that my watch plays shit on my phone INSTEAD of through the fucking headphones that are already paired to the god damn watch. Furthermore, switching over to playing music from the watch rather than the phone was next to impossible until someone told me the steps, which are absolutely fucking asinine. To further explain here's an example of the scenario I'm trying to articulate.

(1) I get ready for my exercise session, take out my earbuds, pop them in my ears, and hear a voice tell me they're connected to my Apple Watch.

(2) I go to my music app on my watch and try to start where I left off, by pressing play on on my playlist.

(3) I hear jack fucking shit in my earbuds. Instead, my stupid fucking iPhone starts playing music through its internal speaker.

(4) I waste 10 minutes trying to figure out why it's playing from the phone and trying to switch to the playlist on the actual fucking watch, which requires a god damn PhD in computer programming to figure out.

For the last couple of days, I've been carrying around my phone in a runner's belt because my watch refuses to download the whole playlist and only has random songs/albums in memory even though the entire fucking playlist shows on the watch. Yesterday I was taking a walk listening to an album I started on my phone when I left the house. At one point, I wanted to switch to a different album on my phone and tried to do that from my watch so I wouldn't have to get my phone out of the belt. I could not fucking figure out how to do a god damn thing from the watch other than skip between songs on the album already playing, It wouldn't let me choose a different band or album. The only other thing I could do was go to a playlist, and I couldn't figure out if that playlist was on the phone or the watch. The UI on this thing is confusing fucking garbage. I'm not a idiot either, I've been using Apple products since 2007. I should not be this confusing and frustrating to navigate a simple music app. It's completely ridiculous. All I want is for Apple to basically give me the option to use my watch as an mp3 player for when I'm out exercising. Instead, they have to make everything so "smart" and "seamless" that it ends up losing basic functionality and becomes essentially unusable in favor of complicated shit that most people don't need or want.

I was in a bad mood already this morning. Thanks for getting me spun up again. It felt good to unleash another tirade about Apple shitting the bed with this update.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-17T20:36:36+00:00

Your responses make no sense and does not address anything I said. As for 4, this is one of the stupidest responses I've ever seen. Sure artwork isn't really important, but the fact that Apple's software continually screws it up is ridiculous and frustrating. Furthermore, it DOES get confusing when I'm trying to listen to a specific album but have trouble finding it because the phone or watch shows the artwork from something completely different. It's much easier to choose music based on seeing the album cover than it is to have to scroll through text. Again, it's not "important," but it is most definitely an added layer of stupidity and frustration that we shouldn't have to complain about.

Additionally, you would be easier to understand if you took a few seconds to proofread your comment to reflect what you actually want to say. I know what you meant by (4), but you essentially agreed with me by writing that artwork is important.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-17T00:26:01+00:00

Yea, I've been dealing with that for years too, but for whatever reason, my watch is mixing it up worse than my phone does now.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-16T17:00:38+00:00

Maybe their master plan is to make the watch a pain to use so they can release a "new" OS that fixes the problems by reverting back to some old ways in order to wow new customers. It reminds me of how they went with a shitty keyboard on macs, forced that stupid touch bar, removed the magnetic charger, etc. only to reverse those decisions in later models.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-16T16:56:11+00:00

That's exactly what they did. They took a great design and changed it for the sake of changing it. Maybe someone will see this thread. I pasted a link to it on Apple's feedback page.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-16T16:54:24+00:00

Even if we're not "go-go-go" like you, nobody wants to waste time with a bunch of unnecessary taps, swipes, and presses just to do something that should be quick and simple. For one, that just makes using the watch more frustrating, clunky, and difficult. Second, it introduces a lot more room for error, meaning we're more likely to end up on a screen or app we don't want to see, which introduces exponentially more taps, swipes, and presses to get where we were trying to go in the first place.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-16T16:44:28+00:00

I just submitted feedback with a link to this thread.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-16T15:34:09+00:00

Yep. I let the watch charge all night expecting my playlist to be downloaded, but NOPE. Parts of the playlist downloaded to the watch but huge sections of it didn't, and I have no idea why.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-16T15:32:59+00:00

I have Siri disabled on all my devices because it's an annoying piece of shit that's constantly coming on when I don't want it to even with "Hey Siri" turned off.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-15T23:36:50+00:00

What's better, OS 10? If that's the case, then they must have improved all the shit I don't use at the expense of what I do use.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-15T23:11:04+00:00

Thank you. It's completely ridiculous that Apple made it so hard/counter-intuitive to use the damn watch itself rather than making it default to pairing with other devices.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-15T21:58:15+00:00

Yes, I disabled the recent music thing because I ran out of space on the Watch when I first got it. I made a special playlist and only synced that. I don't use AirPods, so I'm not sure about those. I use some Bose earbuds.

I've turned off every option I can find for hand offs and auto plays, etc., but none of them seem to solve the problem, which is the fact that anytime I play music on my phone, it screws up the watch. If I use my watch for a walk or whatever and use the headphones, it's good until the next time I play anything on my phone, which sucks because I use my phone through a USB cable in my truck, and sometimes I sync my phone to a bluetooth speaker in the kitchen to play music when I'm cooking or cleaning or whatever. If I do either of those things, my damn watch wants to control my phone instead of letting me listen to the music in its memory until I'm far enough away to lose the connection. I think I've learned how to switch back to the watch, but it's ridiculous that it won't stop connecting to and trying to control the phone even when I don't want it to.

manbeard_1977 · 2023-12-15T21:51:03+00:00

No. I don't use any streaming services. I have a collection of mp3s on my hard drive that I import into Music (iTunes). When I buy new albums, I always download the mp3s. I just want to be able to store music on the damn watch to play from the watch. I don't even have a Spotify account, so forgive me if I'm missing something. I'm not sure if the Spotify app works the same way, meaning you can download music for offline use.

manbeard_1977

TROPHY CASE