china guy
A taff living in Sichuan
Hi H - we're also confused............
But first more on that Greenish with the two wing bars we pictured a couple of posts back, from the Moxi area. This photo comes from just over a year back - August 25 2009 - very high at around the 3,500m mark, in the Rhody-scrub past the present day (Yak-induced) tree-line.
From my pics I can see there were more than one of these 2 bar birds up there - and at this time of year, in habitat like this, there's a fair chance they were a fall of passage birds making their way south.
I've included a pic of one of the other birds - here you see the better lighting shows the under plumage to be much lighter - but the way the light falls across the bill masks that characteristic color difference between upper and lower mandible. This bird also gives the impression that the supercilium ends well before the start of bill - which is usually a characteristic of Arctic.
As for calls - well we have calls that are labeled Greenish and Two-barred - but don't have complete confidence in them..........
which brings us back to the subject of confusion -
Brazil, Birds of East of China p360, writes on the call of Two-barred Greenish (plumbeitarus) -
" ...but can also recall disyllabic call of Greenish warbler, making separation of voice extremely difficult and potentially unreliable".
More confusion is a added when you look at pics in OBC images -
http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?p=29&Bird_ID=1829&Bird_Family_ID=&pagesize=1
Here we see a plumbeitarus pictured with what looks like one bar!!!!!!!!!!!
However those breeding Greenish we have in Sichuan and central China - should belong to the (well named) ssp obscuratus - which is shown on p360 of Brazil's book - and indeed shows signs of two wing bars.
But as far as for plumbeitarus showing up in our neck of the woods - well that should also be possible during passage.
And as to their certain ID. It looks like the one place where you have the best chance of doing that is up in NE China/Asia - here two-barred birds are more certain to be be plumbeitarus - but for us guys with our breeding population of 2-barred obscuratus and the chance of plumbeitarus passing through on passage - well a pair of scissors to snip off a feather or two and a portable DNA kit wouldn't go a miss!!!!!
Here are some more pics from that day a year back -
2nd picture is a slightly more easy to ID warbler - good old Buff-barred.
And finally evidence that aerial migration isn't confined to Birds - a Tortoiseshell as you don't usually see them, among alpine flowers at 3500m, on its way somewhere or other. An Eurasian species - Small Tortoiseshell has occasionally been sighted in the states. Its suspected that those mighty journeys have been human assisted - but our high altitude Tort does show these guys are pretty tough travelers.
But first more on that Greenish with the two wing bars we pictured a couple of posts back, from the Moxi area. This photo comes from just over a year back - August 25 2009 - very high at around the 3,500m mark, in the Rhody-scrub past the present day (Yak-induced) tree-line.
From my pics I can see there were more than one of these 2 bar birds up there - and at this time of year, in habitat like this, there's a fair chance they were a fall of passage birds making their way south.
I've included a pic of one of the other birds - here you see the better lighting shows the under plumage to be much lighter - but the way the light falls across the bill masks that characteristic color difference between upper and lower mandible. This bird also gives the impression that the supercilium ends well before the start of bill - which is usually a characteristic of Arctic.
As for calls - well we have calls that are labeled Greenish and Two-barred - but don't have complete confidence in them..........
which brings us back to the subject of confusion -
Brazil, Birds of East of China p360, writes on the call of Two-barred Greenish (plumbeitarus) -
" ...but can also recall disyllabic call of Greenish warbler, making separation of voice extremely difficult and potentially unreliable".
More confusion is a added when you look at pics in OBC images -
http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?p=29&Bird_ID=1829&Bird_Family_ID=&pagesize=1
Here we see a plumbeitarus pictured with what looks like one bar!!!!!!!!!!!
However those breeding Greenish we have in Sichuan and central China - should belong to the (well named) ssp obscuratus - which is shown on p360 of Brazil's book - and indeed shows signs of two wing bars.
But as far as for plumbeitarus showing up in our neck of the woods - well that should also be possible during passage.
And as to their certain ID. It looks like the one place where you have the best chance of doing that is up in NE China/Asia - here two-barred birds are more certain to be be plumbeitarus - but for us guys with our breeding population of 2-barred obscuratus and the chance of plumbeitarus passing through on passage - well a pair of scissors to snip off a feather or two and a portable DNA kit wouldn't go a miss!!!!!
Here are some more pics from that day a year back -
2nd picture is a slightly more easy to ID warbler - good old Buff-barred.
And finally evidence that aerial migration isn't confined to Birds - a Tortoiseshell as you don't usually see them, among alpine flowers at 3500m, on its way somewhere or other. An Eurasian species - Small Tortoiseshell has occasionally been sighted in the states. Its suspected that those mighty journeys have been human assisted - but our high altitude Tort does show these guys are pretty tough travelers.
Attachments
Last edited: