Siberian/Scandinavian/nominate Chiffchaff (1 Viewer)

Just been to Kempsey Sewage Works near Worcester this morning, where 5 Chiffchaffs have been seen over last few weeks, including 2 Siberian, one possible Scandinavian and 2 or 3 nominate.

I watched at least 3 birds for over an hour, they didnt sing or call once whilst they actively fed. How on earth do you tell the difference? I have seen many Chiffchaffs in the Uk and they vary in colour anyway. I think I had 2 Siberian Chiffchaffs and a heavily ringed nominate. I couldnt even see the last birds leg colour due to the 4 rings it had - blue and pink on the left leg and silver and orange on the right leg. But the other two seemed unringed and appeared to have near black legs with blackish-raspberry coloured feet. They possessed smooth pale neat underparts and brownish upperparts. The face behind the eye seemed darker brown. But I just did not feel comfortable about confirming id despite such good prolonged views.

The 2 suspected siberian birds seemed slightly less shy but this may just have been my interpretation. Any advice would be appreciated, and also I know 2 or 3 were ringed just a few days ago - I wondered if anyone knew which sub-species the bird with 4 colour rings on was? Is there any way I can find out?

Nick,

The Siberian I saw at Slimbridge earlier this year showed no green on it what so ever, even the brownest Chiffs tend to show some green on the wing feathers. It also came across as very washed out, ie very pale, grey/brown almost silvery tone to the mantle, with fairly white underparts, which make the legs seem darker due to the contrast. Obviously call is the important thing but above is just a few things I noticed about them.

Cheers

D

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your tips mate, sort of re-inforces my thoughts that I have seen two of them today.

Hope you have a good new year mate

nick

dan pointon said:

Nick,

The Siberian I saw at Slimbridge earlier this year showed no green on it what so ever, even the brownest Chiffs tend to show some green on the wing feathers. It also came across as very washed out, ie very pale, grey/brown almost silvery tone to the mantle, with fairly white underparts, which make the legs seem darker due to the contrast. Obviously call is the important thing but above is just a few things I noticed about them.

Cheers

D

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According to the BB paper on tristis Chiffs (Dean & Svensson, British Birds, vol. 98, no. 8, 2005) this doesn't sound like a bird that should be assigned to tristis on the basis of the plumage described here. To quote Alan Dean: "records of tristis should be evaluated against the criteria established from individuals originating from the core of tristis distribution in eastern Siberia. Such birds are 'brown, buff and white' (with a distinctive call) and are not pale, silvery, 'grey-and-white'."

wolfbirder said:

I wondered if anyone knew which sub-species the bird with 4 colour rings on was? Is there any way I can find out?

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You can use the following to report it and get a summary of the bird in question:
http://blx1.bto.org/euring/html-additional/colour-rings.jsp?LAN=en

Many thanks Brian for your input. I must admit I find describing colouration as a little ambiguous anyway. Pale/white are defined by different people in different ways. My two birds were whitish underneath - just not white as in Smew white.

I am far from an expert and find studying them fascinating but very very difficult.

My suggestion would be to read the British Birds paper quoted by Brian - if nothing else, it will give some idea of how variable Chiffchaff can be, and how hard it can be to confirm the specific race of any Chiffchaff. Rule of thumb seems to be, that non-calling birds are not safely identifiable.

I think that is excellent advice. I have been looking a photos of both Siberian and nominate Chiffchaff on Birdguides (search) and to be honest some look identical to me. There are Sibes with obvious green in the wing and nominates with very pale/white underparts.

All I know is there have been maximum of 6/7 birds reported (3 noms, 2 or 3 Sibes, 1 Scandinavian) - and 2 noms and 1 Sibe were ringed on 23rd. Today I saw 2 non-ringed birds which i think were Sibes, and one carrying 4 rings and looking very gaudy as a result which i think was nominate.

A real challenge for even the best birders.

A challenge is the word Wolfbirder.

http://www.club300.de/articles/005_tristis/index.html

JanJ

wolfbirder said:

I have been looking a photos of both Siberian and nominate Chiffchaff on Birdguides (search) and to be honest some look identical to me. There are Sibes with obvious green in the wing and nominates with very pale/white underparts.

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Ah, but are the 'Sibes with obvious green in the wing' actually examples of tristis, or just birds that have been identified as such by someone or other and then sent in to Birdguides? There is a world of difference....
Regards,
Harry

brianhstone said:

According to the BB paper on tristis Chiffs (Dean & Svensson, British Birds, vol. 98, no. 8, 2005) this doesn't sound like a bird that should be assigned to tristis on the basis of the plumage described here. To quote Alan Dean: "records of tristis should be evaluated against the criteria established from individuals originating from the core of tristis distribution in eastern Siberia. Such birds are 'brown, buff and white' (with a distinctive call) and are not pale, silvery, 'grey-and-white'."

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Hmmm, well this bird called as well, and was definitely a tristis. Strange. It was definitely more washed out that any of the other Chiffs in the area, and did show white underparts as stated, perhaps just due to variation?

I was thinking exactly that Harry!

Jan thanks for your excellent input as usual mate...take me a while to read but great stuff to digest!

dan pointon said:

Hmmm, well this bird called as well, and was definitely a tristis. Strange. It was definitely more washed out that any of the other Chiffs in the area, and did show white underparts as stated, perhaps just due to variation?

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I didn't say anything about calling birds. There is a lot of variability within each population. You could easily have a paler tristis. The important point is that on plumage alone (which wolfbirder was faced with) they are far from straight forward and one matching your bird could not be safely assigned.

brianhstone said:

I didn't say anything about calling birds. There is a lot of variability within each population. You could easily have a paler tristis. The important point is that on plumage alone (which wolfbirder was faced with) they are far from straight forward and one matching your bird could not be safely assigned.

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Ah right, fair enough then. Agreed for ID to be 100% call is an essential factor, in the post I say this only relates to a single bird, therefore pointing out some of the features I had witnessed on Sibe Chiffchaff,
although I have very little experience of them and look forward to the rest of this debate....

Link to Worcester Chiffies

Will probably answer your questions -

http://www.worcesterbirding.co.uk/24.html

see the thread from a year to two back

Spud/Logos said it all back then

very tricky birds - anything 'greyish' sounds dodgy to me... and i'm sure tristis can have green edgings to prims/secs. Call is not all it was thought to be either.

Tim

edit. Here's Spud's post:
here's Spud's post

There is widespread confusion about the identification of eastern Chiffchaffs, not surprisingly really as the three widely recognised forms do not seem to correspond very well with the geographical limits of the plumage features associated with each, perhaps neither do calls.

There is a lack of information about what happens either side of the Ural Mountains which represent a break in distribution. Conventional wisdom suggests that to the west birds are of the form abietinus and to the east tristis, though some supposed abietinus (based on distribution and call) seem to look more colourless and 'eastern' than some birds from east of the Urals - so called 'fulvescens'. It is only much further east that birds occur which consistently only show tristis plumage features (which, incidentally are essentially buffy brown birds with no green and, incidentally, little suggestion of marked grey tones in the mantle).

Statistically, most of the obvious non-collybitta Chiffchaffs seen in Europe will be eastern abietinus and 'fulvescens' tristis but pure tristis must also occur based on migration strategy and population size.

Certain tristis (on range) certainly have a distinctive song (consisting of a three rather than two note pattern and occasionally sounding like the opening notes of the song of a Willow Warbler). How far west this song can be heard is a mystery to me though I don't know of any evidence that it is regualrly heard west of the Urals.

Call is a more difficult clue to use as there is some individual variation and people can hear the same call differently. The calls are not that different really but the so-called lost chick call of known tristis is fairly distinct and most reminiscent - to my ears - of the call given by a Mallard duckling when trying to catch up with the rest of the brood. Some western Chiffchaffs (incl. especially juv. collybitta) can certainly sound similar, though perhaps only temporarily. Interestingly most of the birds that I've heard giving the strangely none-Chiffchaff like sweeoo call have been of eastern type (though often greyish mantled with clear green tones on the rump so this might be largely confined to some abietinus.

I've never heard a known tristis (on range) give a call which sounded exactly like the pweep or hweep call I associate with western Chiffchaffs but until there is confirmation of exactly what happens either side of the Urals concerning calls I'm reluctant to assume that 'fulvescens' cannot given a western like call or that some birds from west of the Urals can't sound exactly like tristis on a regular basis.

I've probably seen something like 50 eastern-type Chiffchaffs in the UK, many of which have been calling and some of which have sounded exactly like tristis. Although I've never heard tritis like song in the UK other relaible observers certainly have. Despite this I'm not currently willing to assume that the birds sounding like tristis certainly were that form or that any of those with less tristis like voices were not from the east of the Urals.

In a nutshell, I don't know how to differntiate for certain between the most tristis like abietinus and 'true' tristis and I don't know anyone who does. Similarly, I suspect that some of the birds that seem to fall short of the requirements of tristis actually do come from well east of the Urals.

Better brains than mine have struggled with this for decades and drawn a blank. Only extensive fieldwork across the species range and a very thorough comparison of the results with museum material is like to allow further advances.



edit: as an aside, while i was doing some cd burning i noticed this page http://www.worcesterbirding.co.uk/24.html

perhaps someone might like to comment on the origin of the chiffchaff?

I know that the superb Dutch Birding website has several examples of calling Siberian Chiffchaff but does anyone know where I can hear the song of this form. either on the web or CD please?

Originally posted to Surfbirds by Steve Preddy

There's a fascinating paper in the current issue of BB by Alan Dean and Lars Svensson, dealing with Siberian Chiffchaffs. Lars and Alan are commendably cautious in the way they word their conclusions - quite rightly so, as what they have to say is quite radically different from "accepted wisdom". However, if one follows their arguments through (with a bit of extrapolation/oversimplification) I think you get the something resembling the following.

1. Much of what's been written on Sibe Chiffchaff over the last few years is rubbish. As a result, if you think you've seen Sibe Chiffchaff in Britain, you almost certainly haven't, even if you heard it call and it didn't sound like a Common Chiffchaff - this just means you haven't been listening to Common Chiffchaffs carefully enough, as they have lots of calls, not just 'hweet'

2. Siberian Chiffchaffs are brown above and washed buff below, and not at all pale - when we say brown, they're not in Dusky Warbler's league but they're heading that way - forget the idea that they're "grey & white" - that's nonsense

3. There might be a discernible western population of Sibe Chiffchaffs which can be separated as "fulvescens", but there probably isn't and the idea that there is might just result from some overactive imaginations - all that's probably going on is a greater tendency towards some yellow in some parts of the plumage in the west of the range - apart from that the birds here are still essentially identical in appearance to tristis ... repeat - they're not "grey-and-white"

4. Grey & white chiffchaffs like those seen in Britain in many recent winters are just eastern abietinus Common Chiffchaffs ... follow the collybita-abietinus cline east, and this is what you get; the difference between these birds, which in some quarters have been called - incorrectly - "classic tristis", and "not so classic" birds, has no real significance - they're all just flavours of abietinus, or possibly hybrids. They're NOT tristis!

5. Whilst there is clearly a well-documented collybita-abietinus cline, there isn't anything like as much existing between abietinus and tristis; it's likely there's some hybridisation going on, but it could be just as unimpressive & insignificant as that between Common & Iberian Chiffchaffs.

6. Calls? ... Common Chiffchaff has a variety of calls, and there's a bit of geographic variation going on too; grey-and-white chiffchaffs, if they call oddly, are just reflecting that. Some of these calls can be transcribed in the same way as that of tristis, and so could easily fool observers who don't have experience of tristis into thinking that tristis is what they've heard ... WRONG!!!

7. As for grey-and-white chiffchaffs with "different-sounding" songs ... probably they're just "mixed singers" ... either hybrids, or birds of the race abietinus from near to the hybrid zone that have learnt the wrong song.

8. So, to recap, both Common Chiffchaffs and Siberian Chiffchaffs vary individually and geographically, Common Chiffchaff more so, to the extent that out-of-context pale eastern birds can give the impression that they're a different species from dingy western birds - but they're not. Common & "real" Siberian Chiffchaffs do however look different in all plumages, and have totally different songs ... now then, what's the genus we're dealing with here again? ... and when we get such striking differences in song between two different forms in this particular genus, especially when correlated with fairly sizeable DNA differences, what does that mean? Correct - we do have two different species, but their respective appearance is quite different from the mental images which most British birders currently have. Furthermore, most birders have only seen one of them in Britain - time to get the tippex out !!

Flippin eck !! Sorry I have opened up a whole can of worms but for me all this is fascinating stuff, this discussion and input is superb reading and invaluable to me !

An incredibly complex phenomena, it does seem identification at best has to be taken as 'probable' only.

Thanks Tim and also Periwinkle - the link to Worcestershire birding answers my questions - the bird I described as probable nominate and having 4 different coloured leg rings on is photographed in the hand (beneath the photo it describes the same sequence of colour rings as I stated in my first post!) and thoughts are that this is in fact "tristus" but at the extreme edge of its range. It is also thought that the two paler underparted, unringed birds also with brown upperparts are probably Siberian "fulvescens". But obviously they need to be trapped to confirm this.