Warbler S.E.England? (1 Viewer)

Found this old shot (not one of my best) unfortunately the only one, taken Sep.13th 2005.

Cheers

Hello Ken, here I would like to learn from others, because its not IDable to me. But I cant resist to write my thoughts:
First impression says: looks good for an Hippolais. Long, slender, blunt-tipped bill, open face with beady eye, square cut tail with not extremly long and full undertail-coverts.
And further? Bill seems pale ("ill") greenish-yellowish at the base and dark (blackish towards the tip). I see a similar colour at the vent and undertail-coverts. This shouldnt be a normal colour for any Hippolais, but I think this can be explainend by reflection of the foliage. So I wouldnt trust in colours here.
More: such a blurred and appearently colour-shifted picture (no offense as allways) seems to hard, it could even be a pittfall picture of a Bonnelis Warbler when ignoring the bill.

Conclusion: I would say, its one of those that are better left unidentified, but can be stored as a PROBABLE Hippolais. Is the default species an Icterines, which I think is scare/rare on migration or is Melodious similar frequent there? It looks really short winged, so this might be a Melodius Warbler, but I dont think this can be assesed with certainty.

Speculating about rarer Hippolais is beyond my knowledge and I dont think its adisable in this case.
But: if someone can provide an ID I would be happy to learn. So thanks for sharing, Ken!

I think this is one of your ‘pitfalls’ Alex - the black area under the tail and flanks is a gap in the vegetation. It’s heavily over processed so any mid tones or buff colours that might have been there are ‘burnt’ out - I would say, when you look at bills from this angle, and with head in this forward position, the bill can appear much longer than it actually is. I couldn’t rule out a Reed Warbler on this image.

Another one that got away

Helle Deb: at first, I wanted to write that the undertailcoverts are to short and not full enough and broad for an Accro....

BUT: You are right, there are too many artefacts that avoids ID of this bird and leave this picture to speculation. So its better to leave this one unidentified.

Alexander Stöhr said:

Helle Deb: at first, I wanted to write that the undertailcoverts are to short and not full enough and broad for an Accro....

.

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Based on what you think you see! Most of the utcs and the bulk/all of the tail and the upper half of the bird are hidden behind vegetation Alex.

(Ps of course I know what an Accro looks like cf to hippo but thanks for the lesson :)

15 years now but I can still remember ''not'' seeing an Acro in the trees, hence my attempts to image at the time. It's a low quality grab from film taken under shaded canopy, thus burnout and artefact was always going to be a problem. Thought it worth showing though, as it did look more Hippo than anything else.

Glad you enjoyed it Alex.

Cheers

KenM said:

15 years now but I can still remember ''not'' seeing an Acro in the trees, hence my attempts to image at the time. It's a low quality grab from film taken under shaded canopy, thus burnout and artefact was always going to be a problem. Thought it worth showing though, as it did look more Hippo than anything else.

Glad you enjoyed it Alex.

Cheers

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Ken I wasn’t saying it was an accro, my point was it is unidentifiable - I just wanted to note that the tail and utcs are
largely obscured by vegetation- the black gaps were being misread as plumage! If you remember at the time more details, as I’ve said before, it might help to include them in your opening statement. But thank you for sharing your photo, you never know ...:t:

KenM said:

15 years now but I can still remember ''not'' seeing an Acro in the trees, hence my attempts to image at the time. It's a low quality grab from film taken under shaded canopy, thus burnout and artefact was always going to be a problem. Thought it worth showing though, as it did look more Hippo than anything else.

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Does that mean the film was destroyed/deleted, and if it was a potentially interesting bird, why? Were there no other screenshots available to take?

Deb Burhinus said:

Based on what you think you see! Most of the utcs and the bulk/all of the tail and the upper half of the bird are hidden behind vegetation Alex.

(Ps of course I know what an Accro looks like cf to hippo but thanks for the lesson :)

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This is deja vue.

Ken - can you confirm if you have posted shots of this bird previously

dantheman said:

Does that mean the film was destroyed/deleted, and if it was a potentially interesting bird, why? Were there no other screenshots available to take?

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If memory serves it was a B*****D to image, and this was the only “detailed” grab that I could recover from perhaps 10 secs.of footage as it was leafing it’s way through the canopy before disappearing.

Phil Andrews said:

Ken - can you confirm if you have posted shots of this bird previously

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I may have done, seem to recollect that there was not much response at the time for what I thought was an interesting image. Clearly as time moves on and people with it, I thought that it might merit another viewing for any fresh blood with an interest.

Cheers

KenM said:

I may have done, seem to recollect that there was not much response at the time for what I thought was an interesting image. Clearly as time moves on and people with it, I thought that it might merit another viewing for any fresh blood with an interest.

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Previously posted here: https://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=315848

KenM said:

I may have done, seem to recollect that there was not much response at the time for what I thought was an interesting image. Clearly as time moves on and people with it, I thought that it might merit another viewing for any fresh blood with an interest.

Cheers

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Quite the opposite it was closed because it had a lot of negative response.

So probably best to close this one as well.