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Chiffchaff, France (1 Viewer)

dantheman

dantheman

Bah humbug
Chiffchaff (presumably) in SW France earlier in the week. Was trying out a new camera, hence images (plenty more blurred/random shots). Bit struck by the strong supercilium and apparent white wing bar and brown capped effect. Think the white balance is a bit out, but it was pretty brown and white. Any thoughts?
 

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A truly superb bird! The only brown Chiffy I can think of is Mountain Chiff Chaff.....lucky Bugger!

I've had several ''brown jobs'' but not as well imaged as these, no wing bars on mine although contrasting pale panel to secondaries on one individual, also all three birds were suffused buffy pink to the underparts.

Cheers
 

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Nice! Looks like a classic tristis (what Dean and Svensson termed "brown and buff"). Tho with some greyish tones too, tho not as much as many birds which call like tristis. Even got the "tobacco-coloured" ear coverts which i remember from the Macmillan guide. Of course, ideally it would have been calling?..
 
Thanks Ken - certainly a smart bird ... Wouldn't think Mountain Chiffchaff tbh (would be an absolute mega), but wondering about variation in the more expected forms.
 
jogresh said:
Nice! Looks like a classic tristis (what Dean and Svensson termed "brown and buff"). Tho with some greyish tones too, tho not as much as many birds which call like tristis. Even got the "tobacco-coloured" ear coverts which i remember from the Macmillan guide. Of course, ideally it would have been calling?..
Click to expand...

Thanks Mike. I was over-concentrating on trying to get images at the time, but it did call. Wing bar thus fits well, ear coverts too (noted but then forgot). It did call - I thought it was quieter, sharper and shorter at the time. Listened on xeno canto and sounds perfect. (The last time I heard a Siberian I really noted it - maybe my hearing or concentration going off!).

Wasn't really aware of brown tristis. I know the rules have changed in the last years - is there an up-to-date resource/website giving the latest? Or is it all still a mess/confusing?

Cheers.
 
The Mountain Chiffchaffs i saw recently in Georgia had the habit of dipping their tails downwards when feeding if that assists in the ID:t:

Laurie -
 
This is could well be a tristis - however I'm a bit uneasy about the plumage tones in the photos (I have two monitors and it looks very different on each!).

It's not a mountain chiffchaff - green tones on the wing, weak GC bar, pale soles to the feet, some yellow in the super (a little bit is acceptable in tristis - or at least 'fulvescens type', which is essentially tristis with very small amount of residual abietinus infuence from historic intergrades).

Tail pumping is common in common and Siberian chiffs so it won't help with a Mountain one.
 
Fat Paul Scholes said:
This is could well be a tristis - however I'm a bit uneasy about the plumage tones in the photos (I have two monitors and it looks very different on each!).

It's not a mountain chiffchaff - green tones on the wing, weak GC bar, pale soles to the feet, some yellow in the super (a little bit is acceptable in tristis - or at least 'fulvescens type', which is essentially tristis with very small amount of residual abietinus infuence from historic intergrades).

Tail pumping is common in common and Siberian chiffs so it won't help with a Mountain one.
Click to expand...

Having trawled P.lorenzii and P.tristis, I find cosmetically so much overlap, regarding green tones in the wing...I’ve yet to observe anything other than olivey tones to a greater or lesser extent in ALL Chiffchaff races?

As Dan commented it’s the striking head pattern that arrests!, off the top of my head P.tristis ranges from the Caspian (North of) to all points East, with P.lorenzii/sindianus to the South of.

I would like to know what the “salient points” are, for separation between MC and TC, from what I can glean the head pattern may be a good marker to start in conjunction with?
 
It’s all laid out very clearly in the collins guide.

Tristis does have a pretty arresting head pattern - and the green tones in the wing of tristis contrast strongly with the rest of the upperparts. In some lights mountain chiffchaff might look to have some green in the secondaries but it wouldn’t detract from an overall rather uniform appearance of this species.

Of course, mountain chiffchaff would be a first for France if not Europe, so as well as not really looking like one, it would also be extraordinarily unlikely.
 
Fat Paul Scholes said:
It’s all laid out very clearly in the collins guide.

Tristis does have a pretty arresting head pattern - and the green tones in the wing of tristis contrast strongly with the rest of the upperparts. In some lights mountain chiffchaff might look to have some green in the secondaries but it wouldn’t detract from an overall rather uniform appearance of this species.

Of course, mountain chiffchaff would be a first for France if not Europe, so as well as not really looking like one, it would also be extraordinarily unlikely.
Click to expand...

.....Possibly more likely than Paddyfield Pipit?
 
Fat Paul Scholes said:
It’s all laid out very clearly in the collins guide.
Click to expand...

Yes you’re quite right!...do you have a different edition of Collins to me?

It couldn’t be clearer where it points out the cosmetic difference between MC and tristis...brown cap against contrasting white super...perhaps you have a more up to date version offering more recent speculation?
 
Eye roll.....

Of course, tristis has a strong super as well, and can look brown capped. And this bird has some yellow in the super, which goes against mountain chiffchaff.

You stick with it being a mountain chiffchaff Ken. Merry Christmas!
 
Fat Paul Scholes said:
Eye roll.....

Of course, tristis has a strong super as well, and can look brown capped. And this bird has some yellow in the super, which goes against mountain chiffchaff.

You stick with it being a mountain chiffchaff Ken. Merry Christmas!
Click to expand...

I’m not seeing any “yellow” in the super Mark, perhaps our eyes are not totally compatible in this instance, but if your argument rests solely on this feature, then I think the points that I’ve raised might carry a tad more weight. That said..the Chiffchaff group along with Lesser Whitethroats as you know is bit of a minefield!

Especially where you head East into Eurasia, where it can be problematic in pinning down and ascribing “variable” birds that can carry features of more than one ssp.

One musn’t forget that the operative word is “guide” essentially the publishers “get out of jail” card, on that note...a Merry Xmas to you too.
 
dantheman said:
I know the rules have changed in the last years.
Click to expand...

Yes i think for many birders, the goalposts were seen as narrowing about 20 years ago, and then re-widened about 5+ years ago when the paler/greyer birds were 're-admitted' to the fold (tho it has been argued that they were never really meant to have been booted out anyway). I was lucky to get chatting to Martin Garner on Unst a few years ago (u may have been there?) when we were watching a pale, grey Chiff. There was a certain amount of confusion at the time amongst rank-and-file birders as to what a classic tristis looked like - a senior ID expert had suggested that these paler, greyish ones might possibly have been southern, eastern abietinus. Martin said that recent research showed that these paler, greyer Chiffs could be found within the core range of tristis in central Siberia.
FWIW i don't think your bird is a Mountain; from what i can recall from Armenia and Georgia they're fairly distinctive when seen well, with uniform fairly dark brown uppers, and a long-tailed and small-sized appearance. Yours has paler, greyer feathers admixed in the plumage of the lower mantle for example. Always interesting and educational.
 
Cheers all.

Yes Mike, I do have a vague recollection you had that conversation, must have been as far back as 2013? Although I wasn't in on it. My recollection of Mountain Chiffchaff too is of a warmer, darker and more uniform upper-ed bird (and google images seems to back this up) so yes - don't see much in the way of a wing bar in images either. Saying that, not sure on the entire range of Siberian, and we know so little it seems, so no knowing where this one came from specifically I guess.

I understand that abietinus hasn't ever been conclusively proven for the UK?

(btw I see a faint touch of buff in the super, esp above the eye).
 
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Abietinus has been confirmed in the uk (DNA) but at the moment remains much rarer than tristis. I suspect that DNA sampling of autumn chiffchaff that look like collybita would reveal more!

I still see yellow (especially on the second picture) rather than buff. Whatever we call it, it would have had the tristis purists calling ‘intergrade’ until recently! And maybe some still would!
 
Fat Paul Scholes said:
Abietinus has been confirmed in the uk (DNA) but at the moment remains much rarer than tristis. I suspect that DNA sampling of autumn chiffchaff that look like collybita would reveal more!

I still see yellow (especially on the second picture) rather than buff. Whatever we call it, it would have had the tristis purists calling ‘intergrade’ until recently! And maybe some still would!
Click to expand...

FWIW (didn't previously look at the 2nd image) I can see on enlargement a tint of the side crown on the supercillium, not seeing any yellow though.

Cheers
 
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