GAME: name that bird!

[inyathi]

@@Soukous no it's not.

[janzin]

How about Cape Weaver Ploceus capensis?

[inyathi]

Sorry I thought I'd replied to this but as happened once before for some reason the reply I was sure I had posted has disappeared.

 

@@janzin You're half right it is weaver but no it's not a Cape.

[janzin]

How about African Golden Weaver (Ploceus subaureus)

[kittykat23uk]

Is it orange weaver (Ploceus aurantius) ?

[inyathi]

Nope not an orange weaver @@kittykat23uk

 

The funny thing having had three wrong answers is that this weaver is probably the easiest of all to identify.

[offshorebirder]

@@inyathi - did you see @@janzin's second guess? Because African Golden Weaver seems like the only possibility left (all-yellow weaver without a dark head, yet with pale eyes).

[inyathi]

Sorry @@offshorebirder I can assure you it isn't the only one left because I know that my identification of this one is 100% correct and no one has yet posted the right name, but then you need to be looking in the right book or you if you don't have the right book you could use Google to get a full list of African weavers to try and find it that way. Weavers can sometimes be a little ttricky but in my last post as a clue I said this is the easiest weaver to identify, the question you need ask is why might that be the case?

Edited October 21, 2015 by inyathi

[kittykat23uk]

Principe golden weaver?

[inyathi]

@@kittykat23uk Yes you're absolutely right, I did give a very subtle clue when I posted the picture by saying I'd found a challenging one, but I had hoped that you wouldn't guess the location at least not straight away, weavers can as I said be tricky and my photo doesn't really give anything away regarding the location which was the crucial piece of missing information you needed. This is why whenever anyone posts a new bird if I can't identify it straight away or I don't have a good idea what it is I always try to remember where they've been from any trip reoprts they've posted or anything they have said or from previous birds they've posted. This photo was taken in the garden of the Bom Bom Island Resort on the island of Principe and Ploeceus princeps the Principe golden weaver is the only weaver species on the island and this is what makes it the easiest weaver to identify in the field, it is also found nowhere else in the world so it must have one of the smallest distributions of any weaver species.

 

I’m guessing not many folks have a copy of the Birds of Western Africa but if you have the Birds of Africa South of the Sahara you might have spotted this weaver and on seeing the name you might either have recalled that I've been to São Tome & Principe or wondered if I had been there, then you would have worked it out. If you'd found my trip report Gabon and São Tomé & Principe you would have found a smaller version of the photo but I was hoping that no one would.

 

Over to you kittykat.

[janzin]

Well I can see that in future I will have to do more sleuthing as to where a person's traveled To be honest I've never even heard of Principe, much less knew where it was or that it had weavers I was looking in all my African books (but those only include East Africa and Southern Africa) for a yellow weaver with a white eye and dark wings.

[Geoff]

@@janzin If you looked online there was a very similar image of a Principe Golden Weaver building a nest in the same tree species to the one Rob (inyathi) posted.

[janzin]

@@Geoff I did look online and even found a page of all weavers from all over but didn't see that one! Oh well, part of the fun of this is to learn some new birds

[inyathi]

@@janzin In the past when it was just African birds I’d thought on a few occasions I’ll pick a bird from Gabon that will make it really difficult because not everyone will have the right books but then I’d have quick check in the Birds of East Africa and find darn it that it’s in the book because it’s found somewhere in Uganda, so this time I went for one that definitely isn’t.

 

Although there is an element of sleuthing involved in how I try to identify birds, really it’s just a case of knowing where people are from, I know @@Geoff is Australian so with his birds my first thought is always is it an Aussie species? Having been there once I saw enough birds to have some idea if it is, if I think it’s not then I would try to recall where he’s been but that’s really just down to memory more than anything. I certainly don’t recall every trip report I read but if someone has been somewhere I think is particularly interesting or a bit more off the beaten track or that hasn’t been written about before or not much I do tend to remember. I may not recall too many actual details of exactly where they went and what they did, but just a recollection that they’ve been to a particular country or region narrows the search area considerably. In your case @@janzin you’ve posted birds from Colombia and Ecuador and while I’ve never been to the former I have been to the latter so it sticks in my mind so whatever you post I always reach for the Birds of Northern South America first of all, that is if I know the bird is not African. Of course I have been to places that I haven’t written about so I assume that other members may also not have written about everywhere they been in which case then it’s just educated guess work.

 

For anyone not familiar with Principe Island here’s a range map for the Principe weaver so you can see where the island is.

 

Fortunately São Tomé e Príncipe or STP as it is often know isn’t in the news very often so I’m not that surprised that many people aren’t aware of the country, after all I believe that it is by area the 2^nd smallest country in Africa only the Seychelles are smaller. STP is a pretty off the beaten track tourist destination, somewhere that is known to serious African birders because of the endemic species but is really not at all well known otherwise. The Islands are conveniently close to Gabon so almost all of the birding trips to Gabon include the option of going to STP as well. There are around 25-26 endemic birds depending on whether you believe they are all full species or that some are just subspecies, this is a similar number of endemic birds as is found in the Galapagos. Due to problems with flights I missed out on birding in the Sao Tome section of Obo NP as a result although I will have to check sadly I don’t think I’ve got many more decent photos of STP endemics to post, for that reason here’s a link to the African Bird Club’s pages on STP where you can find a list of the birds.

 

Other than growing high quality cocoa that is made into some pretty expensive chocolate, Principe’s only other claim to fame as far as I know has to do with physics.

 

In 1919 a British physicist Arthur Eddington wanted to confirm Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, he worked out that the best way to do this would be to take a photo of a group of stars during a solar eclipse and then again at night and compare the two. I won’t go into further details that I probably wouldn’t understand but he calculated that the best place in the world to observe the 1919 eclipse was from Principe Island so he travelled there took his photos and proved that Einstein was right.

 

Other than just knowing about geography to know anything about Sao Tome & Principe you need to be a pretty keen African birder, know a bit about good chocolate or know more than a bit about the history of Special Relativity, I think I’ve got the first two covered the third one not so much.

[janzin]

Hey where's @@kittykat23uk ? It's your turn to post a new challenge

[kittykat23uk]

Sorry bee very busy! Try this one? As its a poor pic and a difficult subject, here is a clue. This is a bird I twitched in Norfolk in September this year.

 

 

OI000001 by Jo Dale, on Flickr

[mvecht]

@@kittykat23uk

 

Hi Jo

is it a Garden warbler (Sylvia Borin) or are we looking at something rarer?

[kittykat23uk]

Good guess bit its a bit rarer than that, as we get garden warblers in Norfolk. this one is a bit of a skulker! Apparently they never look their best when they are seen in the UK..

[mvecht]

@@kittykat23uk

 

Hi Jo

 

then my next guess is Barred Warbler (Sylvia nisoria). A species I am hoping to see one day in Denmark!

[kittykat23uk]

and there I was think this would keep people guessing for quite a while! Your turn!

[mvecht]

@@kittykat23uk

 

Jo, it was definitely tricky but I cheated

The picture gave the date. Googling rare birds in Norfolk on the date gave the last clue but you are right. It is not easy to tell from the picture.

I will try a different angle on the next picture. No pun intended

[mvecht]

oops

the picture was not included.

Here we go.

 

 

[offshorebirder]

@@mvecht - is it a Great Skua (AKA Bonxie)?

[mvecht]

@@offshorebirder

 

correct, it is a great Skua!

You are next.

[offshorebirder]

Kind of refreshing to have a bird in my area of expertise for a change :-)

 

Here is a quick and easy one to guess - I don't have access to my photo archive presently so I'll just throw this one out there: