Whitethroat, SA (1 Viewer)

[opisska]

In a really random spot halfway between Abha and Riyadh we camped next to some scattered acacias in otherwise really empty desert and there were four birds - they were very active so the photos can be of different individuals. At first I thought Lesser Whitethroat, but they made consistent 2-syllable calls very unlike any Lesser Whitethroat I have ever met. I listened to Desert and Hume's recordings but they both do mostly longer calls - I simply have not found a recording that would match these calls.


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[Julie50]

Looks amazing -whatever the species

 

[KenM]

Well they all look distinctly LW, can’t comment on the “regional calls”, other than they may not be documented.
SA is quite big and sparsely populated as you know.

Cheers

 

[Muppit17]

Welcome to the wacky world of wintering Lesser Whitethroats from the Arabian Peninsular!

Back in the day, these would have been ascribed to 'Desert Lesser Whitethroat' and that is what we used in the UAE before being put right by Svensson et al.

Now Desert Lesser Whitethroat is used for a group that breeds in the deserts of Western China and is not recorded anywhere close to Arabia.

The birds that are recorded here are supposed to be 'halimodendri' either clade 1 or clade 2 - the problem is they look (and more importantly sound) nothing like the central Asian breeding LW, as as written in another thread, those DNA tested in western Europe as clade 1 and clade 2 look more like 'normal' LW than the small ones inhabiting the Arabian deserts in the winter. The lowland breeding LW I have seen in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan didn't remind me at all of these birds in a rather subjective comparison. From others it appears that the same 'type' can also be found in the deserts of NW India.

As to what they are? - sorry no idea.

 

[opisska]

Can I just consider this the discovery of a new species and tick them as Curruca ebri?

 

[Muppit17]

You can try...

However plenty have been seen previously, but the experts taxonomic opinion has just not attuned with the observers.