Alcippe sp. Song ID - David's Fulvetta? Guangxi, China (1 Viewer)

[Barbets48]

Sound recording taken in June. Elevation 200m in western Guangxi province.

Bird was observed. The presumed alcippe species in this area is David's Fulvetta, but Huet's has also been reported not far away.
Wondering if species ID can be made from song alone. An initial listen to eBird vocalizations left me unsure as both species seemed to have similar songs (of course those songs could also be submitted incorrectly).

Any help would be appreciated,

Mike

 

[redpandacat]

Hi Mike. It is possible to separate these based on sound but unfortunately in this case it is not definitive. Your recording is a type I sound for Alcippe meaning a whistle without any overtones and without subsequent harmonic sounds (following classification from Tang, 2021). All three Guangxi subspecies (A. d. schaefferi, A. d. davidi, A. h. hueti) make this type of sound. The four whistle phrases in your recording are about 1.01-1.08 seconds in length. This matches more closely with A. d. schaefferi which has average whistle phrase of 0.94 (+/-0.05) compared with A. d. davidi and A. h. hueti with 1.31 (+/-0.09) and 1.27 (+/-0.10) - though note the larger standard deviation for the latter two. So I'd say this is suggestive of A. d. schaefferi but without knowing more about the distributions of the whistle lengths in the Tang analysis it's probably not conclusive.
Nat