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More from Yucatan in January (1 Viewer)

Fair enough. Go to this page, scroll down and follow the link to the gallery using the yellow bar: https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Blue-black_Grassquit

To mention one thing, I do not see a single female colored bird with a pale eye-ring like on the op bird. I have more difficulty in describing what I feel is a difference in the spotting/stripes on the underside.

Disclaimer: during the last many years I have seen many more grassquits than buntings.

Niels

Niels
 
Well I'm still confused. Google Images comes up with pics of both species with and without eyerings and faint sub-moustachial stripes. Obviously I don't know how accurately the images are labelled. Thought I'd found something diagnostic with dark centres to the median coverts on the Grassquit but then found pics of the bunting with the same. Wing length seems to be a consistent difference but how useful this in pics I'm not sure, depends on angle of the shot. I must dig out my photos of "Indigo Buntings" from Mexico a few years back, may get a posthumous ( not the correct word I know but on the whiskey so it'll do) tick.

Phil
 
Phil Carter said:
Well I'm still confused. Google Images comes up with pics of both species with and without eyerings and faint sub-moustachial stripes.

Phil
Click to expand...

Agree. Here's one quite similar to my eye to the OP bird http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-bl...ina-adult-female-standing-among-94097629.html
others have a more prominent eye-ring, and moustachial too I think (but my rubbish IT skills mean I can't work out how to link to them specifically!). Check out the eyering on eg the adult female in the HBW page.

I'd like someone to point out a 'harder' feature to go on in the OP image! It's still doing my head in that they don't cause so much bother in the field! Maybe it's the way they move or something?

EDIT confidence dwindling that my linked bird above is correctly identified!
 
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One thing I don't do is google image search for birds. The false hits are just too many. I limit the images I view to those in the birdforum gallery, the IBC, and some regional sources such as the media in Wikiaves do Brasil and Neotropical birds online where I have better odds than 50:50.

Niels
 
njlarsen said:
One thing I don't do is google image search for birds. The false hits are just too many. I limit the images I view to those in the birdforum gallery, the IBC, and some regional sources such as the media in Wikiaves do Brasil and Neotropical birds online where I have better odds than 50:50.

Niels
Click to expand...

I was just talking about birds I'm confident really are grassquits (agree you have to be careful). The thing I noticed most is they often look somehow more compact and bull-necked compared to Indigo Bunting, but not always, if they're stretching!

EDIT actually I'm not that confident my linked bird is a Blue-black Grassquit!.... But others show eye-rings and submoustachials...honest!
 
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I always look at Google Images with a critical eye and a large amount of scepticism but with these two species (and many more if I'm honest) I still don't know what I'm looking for to be critical about.
I really must have a return visit, a marvellous place.

Phil
 
Another shot of the same Indigo Bunting

Just to give another image to look at from a slightly different angle.
 

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