Is Siberian Chiffchaff tickable? (1 Viewer)

[luke]

What do you guys do?

 

[retrobirder]

Personally, no. But you can do what you want with it. There's a lot of intergrading between eastern race Chiffs. Unless it's a perfect bird, or in the hand, I go with ''showing characteristics of eastern race.''

Interesting birds though, with a weird, almost Bullfinch like call.

Stick it on your splits list.

RB

 

[luke]

fair enough, does the BOU or BBRC recognise this as a species or just a race.

 

[retrobirder]

BOU currently treat it as a race, Luke. Song and call are the more reliable features to go on for tristis.

RB

 

[luke]

got a very likely candidate, which has been seen and heard by a number of birders all think its a good one. the call has been heard on a number of occasions, with everyone saying its different with some birders saying its similar to a dunnock and some say a bullfinch. But i dont think it will end up on my list, its just come off my list of birds i would like to see.

 

[Hotspur]

I tried to see the Fulford bird on Saturday and whilst failing miserably kept getting confused as there were about 20 Bullfinch's in the area and some of the local Dunnocks calls sounded very similar. As for speciation, its a tricky one in a similar vein to the large white-headed gull complex. Im not sure whether Western and Eastern Chiffys would be able to breed due to their difference in song, in the same way that Chiffs and Willow Warblers dont interbreed very often with only a handfull of recorded records. Its also worth bearing in mind that Iberian Chiffchaff is part of the same cline and the push for 2 subspecies would be indicative of this.

 

[Jhanlon]

IMO there is some overlap with the call of abietinus. The more you dig on this subject the more of a minefield it becomes and there's divided opinion on the existence of fulvescens type. On call I'd suggest looking at sonograms and listening to sound files of the 2 types (tristis has a flat call with usually no downslurring). Visually, tristis should have obvious buff and brown tones and lack green ones (except v faintly on the wings) and should have black legs too. I recently found what i thought was a good candidate behind my house but I eventually conceded it wasn't 'classic' enough and put it down as tristis/abietinus type. I had initially thought the call sounded perfect but as i said... it's more of a minefield than you think!

 

[Farnboro John]

Look at the stuff on Surfbirds, that will also give you a clue as to the committees' current situation.

Once the BBRC has adjudicated this year's records, at least we might have some idea whether any of us have seen an "acceptable" one!

John

 

[bobthebirder]

May be of interest? http://www.bbrc.org.uk/100108.htm