GAME: name that bird!

[Galana]

1 hour ago, lmSA84 said:

could it be a juvenile Plain Chachalaca? 

I did say 'Africa' a couple of posts back so not Chachalaca. Sorry.

 

Not an Ant Thrush either @michael-ibk

[kittykat23uk]

Well we should have narrowed this down quite a bit by focusing on Africa and not a babbler or honey guide. I was going to suggest a juvenile Familiar chat. I do not think it is, but I really am stumped to find anything in either the Southern Africa guide or the east Africa guide that resembles this bird. 

[Galana]

5 hours ago, kittykat23uk said:

I really am stumped to find anything in either the Southern Africa guide or the east Africa guide that resembles this bird. 

Yes. I feel your pain.

I was with Emmy when we saw it and he struggled.

Edited September 30, 2020 by Galana
Added a clue.

[ElaineAust]

Good morning @Galana.

Might this be a Grey Throated Barbet from you Uganda trip?

Cheers

Elaine

[Galana]

Sorry not a Barbet.

Like other players it is a puzzler. Lack of apparent size does not help.

Maybe a look at the tail could help. I have a hard job myself believing this is not a freak.

[ElaineAust]

Tail? Size? Freak?

All good clues so here goes.  Black Coucal.

Please be gentle with my beginner status.

E

[Galana]

Smaller not larger.

I may have to pull this photo as I too find it hard to believe at times.

[kittykat23uk]

Scaly breasted illadopsis? I'm running out of ideas.. 

[Galana]

11 minutes ago, kittykat23uk said:

I'm running out of ideas.. 

I think we all are.

I will leave it up but to move along  will use this one to find a winner.

Good luck.

[janzin]

wow, I'm back after four days and still no correct answer?  Hmmm! I'll take another look at it after unpacking...tomorrow...

 

[Soukous]

Ignoring the substitute for a moment, is your mystery bird perhaps a weaver? 

[Galana]

2 hours ago, Soukous said:

is your mystery bird perhaps a weaver? 

No but you are very much closer than some of the other suggestions.

Welcome back @janzinI hope you did not get too much rain on your trip and you saw lots.

You too @Soukousif you are back from the land o the wee Krankie. (and Gordon Buchanan.)

[inyathi]

@Galana

The mystery bird has certainly proved to be that, I knew it didn’t look right for a babbler, but arrow-marked babbler seems to be the only African bird that really has very similar white streaks or spots on the throat or breast, albeit it is much more heavily marked, so I could see exactly why @janzin suggested that bird and once that was ruled out, I then suggested brown babbler because it is quite similar, but I still knew it didn’t look right. That led me to say that my gut was telling me it was not an African bird, because I could not think of any African bird that has those white marks, but I knew as soon as I said that, that the answer would come back that it was an African bird, I couldn’t off the top of my head picture any birds in Asia or South America that might look like it, but I had a quick look through the books anyway and found nothing. I then looked at different African books and still found nothing, I can see some similarity to honeyguides and why that was suggested, but could see that it is not a honeyguide. This failure to find anything led me to think perhaps it is an immature and it just isn’t illustrated, but that didn’t make a lot of sense, so now I can only really conclude that it must be some aberrant individual. You suggested focusing on the tail, I tried that and found the white spots were just too hard to ignore, so I zoomed in and scrolled the picture so I could only really see the legs and tail, but even then, I can’t see anything that matches closely enough, to want to take another guess. So, I’ve given up on it.

 

As for your new bird, I’m not totally sure as to the eye colour and the bill looks perhaps a bit big, but that is hard to tell from the angle, but otherwise is it a black-backed puffback, the plumage certainly seems to match?

Edited October 3, 2020 by inyathi

[Galana]

Part One.

4 hours ago, inyathi said:

You suggested focusing on the tail,

Yes. I thought the tail being largely brown with black towards the end may ring bells. I agree it seems aberrant. I have googled and there are some large variations in some juv plumage but I did find a couple that were close. (Mind you, with Google they are not above being different species so take a large pinch of salt..).

As to Part Two  no such deviance. WYSIWYG but you don't get a Black-backed Puffback. Sorry.

[inyathi]

@GalanaI figured when I said it, that that would have been too easy, I made the mistake of not looking at a few photos, the wing markings and the white on the frons (forehead) seemed right for a female black-backed puffback, but the bill looked too large, looking at some photos confirmed this and had I done that earlier, I would have seen that it could not be the puffback, so I was much too hasty with that answer . I'm still confident that we are in Africa and that I have the right general family, my thoughts about the bill had suggested fiscals, but the wing markings steered me to the puffback as they seemed to fit better, but knowing that it's not a puffback, because only the female black-backed has the right markings and we've ruled that out, takes me back to fiscals. The other possibility I looked at is masked shrike, but the masked is not pure white underneath like your bird, so I ruled that out, there are just two fiscals, that I am aware of that would have the white on the frons that your bird has and a black-crown and one or both depending on your view point are races of the common fiscal, one is a southwestern race Lanius collaris subcoronatus found in Namibia, where of course you have been a few times, the other is the Uhehe fiscal (Lanius marwitzi) considered by some to be just a race of the common fiscal and by others as a full species, it is found in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania and I'm pretty sure that you have visited the right parts of Tanzania, so I would not be surprised if you have seen both options. The tree that the bird is sitting in looks rather juniper like, it certainly appears to be a conifer, I would suggest on that basis we would be in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania not Namibia, so I will say Uhehe fiscal?, even though the white markings on the wings don't look quite right to me, the bill definitely says shrike to me and from what I can see of the bird, it appears to be entirely black and white and I'm not aware of any wholly black and white shrikes outside of Africa.

 

One of the major drawbacks of doing a Google image search for birds or other animals, is the number of mislabelled photos, often times it seems to be photo libraries, more than a few times, I've seen say photos of Thomson's gazelles labelled impalas or similar, when I'm active on Flickr I see so many mislabelled shots, that I have to try and resist the temptation, to always comment and offer a correction. Sometimes I will try to post a diplomatic comment, but a lot of the time I let it go, even though it annoys me a bit. Recently I happened to see a photo on Londolozi's Blog in an article about buffaloes, that said it was a water buffalo and gave the name of the photographer, I knew that the label was completely wrong, because it's shot of a West African buffalo and one that I recognised as having been taken in Pendjari NP in Benin, by a photographer that I follow on Flickr, I posted a comment pointing out their mistake and who had actually taken the photo, I received a reply promising that the guide who'd written the page, would be given a serious ribbing about this, but last I saw months later, it hadn't been corrected. As far as I can see all he had done, is absentmindedly get the labels mixed up, so he attached the information from another photo that was of a water buffalo by mistake, still a bit embarrassing when you are trying illustrate the differences, between the different races and species of buffalo.  

[janzin]

going back to the original bird, I still think Arrow-marked Babbler, juvenile. Juvenile would have the dark eye seen here, and note the yellow gape indicating juvenile. The beak looks right to me too, and the coloration of the wings. Take a look at this photo on the web, its a near match.

 

http://joniecnaturalnie.com/gallery/birds-of-africa/singing/arrow-marked-babbler/#gallery/e4b757d3e119448ab0f5387c27ad99d9/7878

 

[kittykat23uk]

Perhaps it's time for @Galanato put us out of our misery with this bird. I haven't been able to find anything that fits better than a juvenile arrow-marked babbler either.. 

[Galana]

OK. As you know several comments have raised doubts on my ID, (well that bird not me personally although I dunno sometimes!)

Despite some similarities to Babbler I keep coming back to an overriding fact. Size. It was no larger than say a canary or finch. I have been pointing players to size matters but nobody seems to have taken the hint.

And surely the arrows on AM Babbler are not confined to that area and are 'arrow shaped' Vs not spots.

Emmy and I saw this bird clearly (as you can see) by the side of the car and did puzzle mightily as it does not fit easily (and some of the photos on Google are laughable as @inyathisays.)

Our best shot was and is a juv Dusky Twinspot although some sort of Firefinch was considered. Both Emmy and I have seen Dusky Twinspots several times in that part of Uganda so know the Jizz and some don't have much red at first.

Who knows if it had not rained so hard this past February we maybe would have been able to show one to @kittykat23ukinstead of enjoying Crayfish Masala at Muko as that was the afternoon trip that was scrubbed.

Laugh if you will.

[Soukous]

Thanks for putting us out of our collective misery.

I, for one, would never have guessed it using the illustrations in my collection of books.

[Galana]

Moving on I hope,

@inyathi's reasoning  on the Mark 2 effort cannot be faulted but perhaps does not go far enough?

[inyathi]

@Galana Before we move on, I have to say I'm extremely surprised by that ID, as I said in relation to an earlier bird, I never like to question the ID of a bird that I did not see, but your mystery bird is now even more of a mystery, I don't believe that I have ever seen dusky twinspot, but I have seen a couple of the others and on a few occasions, so I am familiar with twinspots and I simply cannot believe that that bird is twinspot, the bill for a start is simply not the right shape, and the tail is too long, however, I'd feel much happier saying this if I knew what else the bird could be, other than going back to arrow-marked babbler, which your description of the size appears to rule out. I can only say that I see a much closer resemblance to the juvenile arrow-marked babbler in the photos that @janzinlinked to, than to any photos of twinspots I've looked at and leave it at that and say its ID remains a bit of a mystery.

[janzin]

Yep, sorry but I'm not buying Dusky Twinspot either. It doesn't look anything like what I'm seeing on the web. And in terms of size...look how long the legs are! That's no finch!

 

I may send this to one of my bird guide friends and see what they come up with.

 

[kittykat23uk]

Or maybe @Galanacould ask dear Emmy to cast his eye over the photo... Perhaps the images got a bit muddled, goodness knows that Uganda has so many birds that it's easy to get confused...or perhaps it is indeed an aberrant dusky twinspot, or perhaps even a hitherto unknown species!

[Galana]

All comments noted and I am the last person to deny the undeniable. It did have us all foxed and apart from size I admit AM Babbler has a few of the attributes. Neither of us called it at the time, more WTH is that! Then after an evening ( he lingers at dinner with me as 'family') the Brains Trust ruled out all impossibles and settled for a probably.

Interesting to read other views. I will send the image to him when next we communicate.

[kittykat23uk]

Has the game stalled? I see @inyathiguessed and then @Galana suggested that he had not gone far enough. I'm not sure what further is needed unless it is simply a different subspecies, of Southern Fiscal? since @inyathialso mentions  Lanius collaris subcoronatus but went for Uhehe instead I'll suggest the former.