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Chiff Chaff or Willow Warbler please (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter tasman
- Start date
me too. The left hand wing on 468 seems to show a long primary projection. I think the angle of the rh wing means we can't judge it there. So a brown willow warbler.
Statements like this is why you annoy people. I've just stated that the primary protection looks long for me (and why). So it's not "clearly" short: to state so has the effect of implying my judgement has no value. A way of stating this more neutrally is to explain why your view is different, and to phrase it in a way that is less declarative, more "for me it's...".
Sometimes images in the id forum are demonstrably one thing or another but often it's equivocal. It's good to reflect this uncertainty in the way we reply and leave space for others' views to be valid
Harrybongo
Well-known member
Hi. Always a difficult one, but a Chiffchaff for me. Dark legs, and the flaring at the end of the supercilium.
petemorris
Well-known member
Well I have to say, in my opinion, this is about as clear-cut Chiffchaff as one could hope for, and great photos to make it easy! Chiffy head pattern including nice eyering under the eye, plumage tones, dark legs, shortish pp etc
Richard Dale
Well-known member
Pete beat me to it, but this looks like a clear chiffchaff (face pattern - dark upper ear coverts contrasting with lower eye-ring, weak supercilium, dark legs and bill, primary projection - about half the tertial length). Be careful with judging emarginations on a closed wing - the emargination on P6 can hide with the feathers tightly closed.
Or you are being oversensitive here because you have (unfortunately - it can happen to anyone) misread the photo and so misjudged a feature? Note...
I am aware that you (and a few others) obsess over this view of me and my use of such expressions, and because of that I have over some months now taken a special note of how often people in this forum use words like 'clearly' or 'obviously'... and they do - often (2 examples above) - without any negative response from other contributors. And I deliberately don't use such terms unless I judge that a feature really should be obvious to the commenter given what I can tell of their expertise (hence my surprise that you misread this photo).
Definitely. But in this particular case it's not equivocal - it's clear (see 2 identical views above).
I don't obsess over you in any way. I would note that you've rubbed more than a few people up the wrong way. Some time ago one left the forum because of your responses (not going to bother to look back to see who).
I think only very slightly. And in any case the wing is still fully folded, so the relative positions of tertials and primaries are unaffected; birds' wings are constructed in such a way that this will be the case. The 3 points one needs to see in order to judge primary-projection - base of tertials, end of tertials and tip of longest primary - are all clearly visible.
