Abietinus Chiffchaff wing length (1 Viewer)

I assume that the range of wing lengths of collybita and abietinus largely overlap. I am wondering if an abietinus with a wing length at the top of their range, will be longer-winged than any collybita. I'm not a ringer, but am curious as to whether this would enable the longest-winged abietinus to be confidently assigned to this taxon? And as an aside, if it is possible, how many (any?) ringing records of abietinus are there?
Hope someone doesn't mind answering a fairly basic question - i have a Svensson ringers guide somewhere, but being rather itinerant, i can't find it at the mo.

Thanks in advance.

I doubt it - we had a Chiffchaff on Hilbre with a wing of 67 mm last weekend and another of 63. Willow Warbler territory and they both appeared to be standard collybita.

Many thanks. I guess a Chiffy with a wing length at the top of the species' range, is not safely ID-able to taxon on this one feature. Still not dug out my Svensson.

Cheers :t: . I had just been curious as had prolonged views of a really close Chiff on the Great Orme a couple of days ago that seemed to have a really long pp (wasn't a Willow Warbler lol), at least comp to the birds i've been staring at for the last few weeks..
We'll get a proper scarcity soon!....

might be worth consulting the fantastic morphometric pages in BWP… although as Phil says, I'm pretty sure there is as yet no confirmed method to assign to ssp reliably away from geographic distribution.
I think that I may have even read somewhere that they aren't confirmed occuring in the UK anyway?

jogresh said:

I assume that the range of wing lengths of collybita and abietinus largely overlap. I am wondering if an abietinus with a wing length at the top of their range, will be longer-winged than any collybita. I'm not a ringer, but am curious as to whether this would enable the longest-winged abietinus to be confidently assigned to this taxon? And as an aside, if it is possible, how many (any?) ringing records of abietinus are there?

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One thing you can be sure of - the longest winged Chiffs will be males, as there is a well marked, size sexual dimorphism in this species. Of ca.8,000 trapped at Eilat prior to 1998, the long-winged tail of the wing length distribution was: 65 @ 68 mm, 22 @ 69 mm, 3 @70 mm. Before anyone screams mis-identification, I should add these birds fit the expectation from the analysis of the bulk stats for the species at Eilat.

As an aside, one of the smallest birds trapped there (51.5 mm) was assigned subspecifically to abeitinus - but not by me Two ringing recoveries given in Morgan, J.H. and Shirihai, H 1997 Passerines and Passerine Migration in Eilat are well within the range of collybita so there is a clearly a big geographical spread from the P. collybita cline in Eilat.

Ta for the additional info, interesting.

Yes i've seen one theory that northwesternmost abietinus might migrate SE (away from UK in essence) and then S through the Middle East, a bit like Marsh Warbler i spose.

jogresh said:

Ta for the additional info, interesting.

Yes i've seen one theory that northwesternmost abietinus might migrate SE (away from UK in essence) and then S through the Middle East, a bit like Marsh Warbler i spose.

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Other northern and western summer migrants do this, most notably Lesser Whitethroat and Red-backed Shrike. Hangovers from a re-colonisation from refugia in the soth-east after the last glaciation, one supposes. Other species seem to adapt and change e.g Blackcap currently.