More Birds from Sichuan, China (1 Viewer)

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 18, 2015

I apologize for not spending as much time identifying these as I could have. My head's in a bad place right now, which makes it really hard to focus on these they way I should. There will be a series of posts in this thread with different birds, which I'll tag with a letter or something so they can be differentiated when discussing. Most of these are pretty distinctive and I could probably figure on my own if I had superior Google-Fu or a better foundation of bird groups.

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 18, 2015

Bird A. These were all taken at Tangjiahe National Park in ... March? April? Thereabouts.

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 18, 2015

Bird B. This may be related (female? juvenile?) of a later bird in this series. Maybe. My mind is not clear.

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 18, 2015

Bird C. Hung out in groups, foraging on the ground. Laughingthrush of some sort?

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 18, 2015

Bird D. Unless I lost count somewhere. This is the one I thought might have been related to the other, but this picture is terrible quality. It was really hard to focus in the dense foliage.

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 18, 2015

Bird E. Saw one of these playing in the snow at Huanglong two days before.

Grahame Walbridge · Sep 18, 2015

A. Male Long-tailed Minivet
C. White-throated Laughingthrush
E. White-collared Yuhina

Grahame

Larry Sweetland · Sep 18, 2015

ok, in the absence of other replies, id go for:

1. Long-tailed Minivet
2. Phylloscopus sp
3. White-throated Laughingthrush
4. Seicercus sp ('Golden-spectacled' complex)
5. White-collared Yuhina

not sure if all the above even occur in Siichuan though!

EDIT, ah, cross-posted with Grahame

Grahame Walbridge · Sep 18, 2015

Larry Sweetland said:
ok, in the absence of other replies, id go for:

1. Long-tailed Minivet
2. Phylloscopus sp
3. White-throated Laughingthrush
4. Seicercus sp ('Golden-spectacled' complex)
5. White-collared Yuhina

not sure if all the above even occur in Siichuan though!

EDIT, ah, cross-posted with Grahame

They do. Would need better images of B & D.

Sorry Larry!

Grahame

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 18, 2015

That's the only even remotely useful image of D, but I can probably find some lower quality, but different angles on B. Let me look through them again. Thanks for the help, folks!

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 18, 2015

Bird B, alternate angle. In retrospect, this image isn't significantly worse than the other one and shows more of the plumage, so would have been a better choice from the start.

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 18, 2015

Bird D, alternate. Is still wildly out of focus, but you can see the coloration on the nape, if it helps at all.

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 18, 2015

And I'm now lamenting that I didn't get even one shot of the female minivet. They were too far away to see how beautiful they were with the naked eye, they were mostly just blurs of color. Even in my viewfinder, I was mostly concentrating on tracking the patch of color as it moved rapidly through the branches rather than appreciating their beauty. Perhaps I should occasionally leave the camera at home and just go birding with binoculars instead.

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 19, 2015

Based on this document (warning, moderately large PDF), I'm going to go with Grey-Crowned Warbler for Bird D.

Grahame Walbridge · Sep 19, 2015

B. The phylloscopus warbler is one or other of the 'Blyth's Leaf/White-tailed Leaf complex, probably either Claudia's or Kloss's on range but without tail pattern I'll pass. You need to examine the pattern of white in the tail which is best viewed from below.

D. I'd like to better views of the wing and forehead but I think you might well be correct in calling it a Grey-crowned.

Grahame

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 19, 2015

I'm looking through my massive quantity of blurry and otherwise crummy shots. Would the tail need to be fanned to observe the difference in the pattern?

Grahame Walbridge · Sep 19, 2015

Sasquatch Fingers said:
I'm looking through my massive quantity of blurry and otherwise crummy shots. Would the tail need to be fanned to observe the difference in the pattern?

From above yes. A more likely scenario is to get an image (from below) which shows the bird's under tail. The pattern of the under tail seen well can aid ID. And occasionally Kloss's show a dark tip to the lower mandible but in this instance the absence of a dark tip does not help!

Grahame

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 19, 2015

These are all the shots I've got, blurry and pixelated as they are. It was always well shaded, so I had to tweak the gamma and the exposure so any contrast at all could be seen on the underside of the tail at all. To me, these mostly all look the same, but perhaps a more trained eye may take more from any one photo than I could from all of them.

Grahame Walbridge · Sep 19, 2015

To give you an idea of how difficult the process is, here are a couple of very useful links.

Blyth's/Claudia's/Davison's

https://ayuwat.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/blythsclaudiasdavisons-part-1/

Kloss's Leaf Warbler

https://ayuwat.wordpress.com/tag/claudias-leaf-warbler/

Grahame

Sasquatch Fingers · Sep 19, 2015

Wow, you weren't kidding. I doubt I could get a good ID if I was holding one in my hand. Thanks for the help, Grahame.

More Birds from Sichuan, China (1 Viewer)

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