Mystery from NSW, Australia (1 Viewer)

This bird was recently posted on Birding-Aus (the Australian Birding Mailing-List) by Mike Simpson. He added:

Glen Davis was great with Turquoise Parrot, White-winged Chough,
White-browed Treecreeper seen among a lot of others I was more familiar
with. However one little brown bird was not familiar to me, and checking the
books was of no help, please see and let me know what this one is:-
http://members.optusnet.com.au/ozbird2/unknown-bird.jpg

Glen Davis is in the Capertee Valley, NW of Sydney NSW
I'm torn between White-winged Triller and Jacky-Winter but now heading for the latter.

Tom

It's not the Triller for me. Body looks too compact. It would be an unusual posture for Lalage usually keeping the wings tucked normally when perched. Looks grey on the lateral breast and I don't have large amounts of grey in my descriptions there for juveniles, females, or eclipse males of the Lalage (exception being a very slight greyish wash of the predominant white belly of the adult male). Beak looks too weak for Lalage. Lastly, the undertail is wrong for Lalage.

Tom Tarrant said:

This bird was recently posted on Birding-Aus (the Australian Birding Mailing-List) by Mike Simpson. He added:

Glen Davis was great with Turquoise Parrot, White-winged Chough,
White-browed Treecreeper seen among a lot of others I was more familiar
with. However one little brown bird was not familiar to me, and checking the
books was of no help, please see and let me know what this one is:-
http://members.optusnet.com.au/ozbird2/unknown-bird.jpg

Glen Davis is in the Capertee Valley, NW of Sydney NSW
I'm torn between White-winged Triller and Jacky-Winter but now heading for the latter.

Tom

Click to expand...

I am wondering about female or immature Brown Songlark? Colouration is vaguely right and there is some darkness around the eye which fits. The bill is potentially a problem. I am also wondering if it is in the process of taking off, giving it that swallow/martin-like appearance in the wings. In my experience the females don't cock their tails like the males so the posture is OK for Songlark as well.

Cheers

Andy