GAME: name that bird!

[offshorebirder]

I know how you feel @@janzin - one is at a disadvantage in this game if one has not visited multiple continents and brought home bird photos. In a couple of years after a few safaris to a couple of continents I might be able to compete with @inyathi @Geoff @Rainbirder and @@kittykat23uk...

 

Here is my next offering - considerably easier than my last one:

 

Edited August 11, 2015 by offshorebirder

[inyathi]

@@offshorebirder It is certainly an advantage to be well travelled with this game, however North America is the one part of the world that I’ve spent the least amount of time in so I’m not as familiar with your birds as those from elsewhere except of course where they overlap with South America. There may be a few familar North American species that I’ve seen as migrants in South America but otherwise I don’t know US birds very well at all.

 

So I’m not at all sure about this one I was hoping someone else might have a go but as they haven’t to keep things going I’m going to take a guess and say is it MacGillivray’s warbler Oporonis tolmiei?

 

[offshorebirder]

Thanks for taking a stab and keeping the game going, @@inyathi - but alas no, it is not a MacGillivray's Warbler.

 

I will give a hint and say that the first photo is a grayish subspecies of this North American Warbler.

 

As a hint, here is another photo of an individual from a more green/yellowish subspecies:

 

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8481/8222003138_82f67f1632_o.jpg

 

Unfortunately I only have an iPad at the moment so I can only post the link, rather than embedding a photo...

[inyathi]

@@offshorebirder Thanks I'm glad to know that I was at least right that it's a warbler, my new suggestion which looks like a better match is

 

Nashville Warbler Oreothlypis ruficapilla.

Edited August 16, 2015 by inyathi

[janzin]

Nashville would have a much stronger eye-ring and even when drab, would show much more yellow underneath. The first picture was really hard to judge but from the 2nd photos I'm going with Orange-crowned Warbler, which is one of our drabbest, if not the drabbest warbler.

[offshorebirder]

Very close @@inyathi, but @@janzin got it - Orange-crowned Warbler. Depending on lighting, plumage status and other variables, Orange-crowned Warbler can look like completely different species and similar to Tennessee, Nashville and other Warblers.

 

The yellowish-green undertail coverts are a key point, as are the semicircular and indistinct whitish eye ring with a hint of a darker eye stripe running horizontally through it.

 

Over to you @@janzin - well done.

[janzin]

Well I'm having a hard time finding ones to stump you great birders, let's give this one a try.

 

[Peter Connan]

Not confident about this, but is it a lesser honeyguide?

[janzin]

@@Peter Connan sorry no.

 

I'll give it another day and then I'll give some hints

[inyathi]

@@janzin I was pretty certain when I first looked at this that it was not an African bird although I had to have a quick look through the books to be sure, it looked to me like it was probably from the Americas and most likely from South or Central so I knew this was going to be major challenge. There are just so many birds to choose from that even with a photo like this taken from a good angle trying to find a match in the books is still very hard, the Birds of Northern South America that I've been looking through has 6,400 illustrations so trying to home in on the right one is not at all easy.

 

However I think I have found a possible answer though I'm not absolutely sure and I may well have picked the right genus but the wrong species yet again, so I am going to take a guess at Yellow-olive Flycatcher (Tolmomyias sulphurescens) or a close relative and hope that I am not completely wrong.

[janzin]

Wow @@inyathi you are just too darn good, I can't stump you! Indeed it is Yellow-olive Flycatcher, taken in Rio Claro reserve, Magdelena Valley, Colombia. It is sometimes called the Yellow-olive Flatbill.

 

I really thought that one would take longer--as you note, many of those flycatchers looks so much alike, and there are so many to choose from! But the clearly grey head and yellow wing-bars on this species are a big hint.

 

Back in your court....

[inyathi]

@@janzin Thanks, I like to think that I know all of the mainland African bird families sufficiently well, that I would know if a bird is African or not, if I’m sure it isn’t, then it’s a question of taking an educated guess as to which part of the world it might come from. Although I had no idea straight off the top of my head, what this bird actually was, much as I said in last post, it looked to me like a Neotropical species, having been to that part of the world a few times now. Of course, in this game when trying to work out where any birds is from it helps to have some idea where the photographer may have been on their travels, you said earlier that South America was your primary birding ground and I recall you posted some parakeets from Colombia, this further supported my hunch, that this was a Neotropical bird and probably from South America. Once I’ve guessed the region, I’ll go through the appropriate book if I have one or the nearest book if I don’t and look for anything that could be a possible match or at least looks somewhat like it and then do a Google image search. If enough photos come up that should quickly reveal if I’m completely wrong or if I am on the right track and if I think I am I can use Google to find out if there are any closely related species, that may not be in any of the books I’ve got. This time around this method got me to exactly the right bird, the last two times only to the right genus.

 

Of course after saying all of that I shouldn’t really have found too difficult to identify this bird as checking through my records I can see that I have actually seen this species, at least the local race of it at Pousada Piuval in the Pantanal in Brazil. Yet for some reason when I had a look through the Birds of Brazil the Pantanal & Cerrado, I failed to spot it even though looking at the book again I think the illustration is rather better than in the other books I looked at. To me the most obvious feature certainly in your photo is the pale lower mandible, but I guess some of the other Tolmomyias flycatchers/flatbills also have this feature so that's not entirely diagnostic, but it did help to rule out any of the other flycatchers or other birds with similar wing-bars but that lack the pale lower mandible.

 

Okay now for something a bit different, this time I thought I’d go with an abstract the following photo is of a bird just not all of it.

 

Any ideas as to what this bird is?

 

 

 

Edited April 24, 2019 by inyathi

[offshorebirder]

Wow @@inyathi you are just too darn good, I can't stump you! Indeed it is Yellow-olive Flycatcher, taken in Rio Claro reserve, Magdelena Valley, Colombia. It is sometimes called the Yellow-olive Flatbill.

 

 

@@inyathi is indeed a super-sharp birder. In my experience, British birders are on average the best birders on the planet. Many of the best birders I know are from the UK and the best living birder I know (Steve N.G. Howell) is a Brit (well - a Welshman to be precise). But the California birding community in the USA has some amazingly good birders and on average they give the Brits a run for their money. A former mentor of mine, the recently departed Rich Stallcup from California is in the running for the best birder ever to walk the earth. But that title is widely acknowledged to belong to the late great Ted Parker.

 

In terms of this game on ST - I have a sort of mental block identifying birds in photos. They often look strange compared to how they look in the field. This phenomenon is even worse with birds in the hand at ringing (banding) stations. The tiny little bird in the hand looks totally strange and things like crown shape and other features are often very different looking than in normal life.

 

So I have a lot of admiration for people who are good at identifying birds from a single photo - especially without knowing location context.

[Soukous]

Just to try and get back into the game I'll take a wild guess at some kind of Spurfowl. Let's try Red Billed Spurfowl - Pternistis adspersus

[inyathi]

@SoukousThat’s not actually a bad guess, ornithologically you’re sort of thinking along the right lines but you won’t find this handsome fellow anywhere near the Kalahari. I will add some more helpful clues in time, a picture of the whole bird would make it too easy so I will wait and see if anyone can offer a correct answer before posting one.

Edited April 24, 2019 by inyathi

[Geoff]

Helmeted Guineafowl Numida meleagris ??

[Soukous]

Actually I doubted it was from Africa at all and my first thought was some kind of exotic pheasant, so I'll go with Silver Pheasant - Lophura nycthemera

[Soukous]

@@inyathi?

[inyathi]

@@Soukous Sorry I must be losing the plot, I honestly remember posting a reply complete with photo and was waiting for you to post a new bird, so I was very surprised when I opened this thread just now and didn’t see it. I don’t know what happened to it, whether I just previewed it and then failed to post it or something crashed I don’t know, whatever happened to it the first time hopefully here it is now.

 

 

Silver pheasant Lophura nycthemera at Wat Tum Pha Plong, Doi Chiang Dao, Thailand

 

 

Over to you.

Edited April 24, 2019 by inyathi

[Soukous]

My birding knowledge is not a patch on yours @@inyathi so I do not have such a wide geographical selection to choose from.

 

Like the previous one, if I showed the whole bird ti would be way too easy - I still think it will not be much of a challenge - but unless there are objections I'd also post a close up of plumage.

 

 

 

 

[mvecht]

@@Soukous

 

Could it be a female Pheasant?

[Soukous]

afraid not @@mvecht

[offshorebirder]

@@Soukous - might it be a Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse?

[Soukous]

not that either @@offshorebirder but you are most definitely getting close

[Peter Connan]

@@Soukous, is it a double-banded sandgrouse?