MKinHK
Mike Kilburn
Here's a good one for the hard cases - and much more so than the Dusky Warbler I posted last time.
This is only the third Lesser Whitethroat record from Hong Kong and was found this morning by my mate Graham while we were out looking for a Pale-footed Bush Warbler in an urban park that has turned up some great birds this year.
As mentioned in Brian Small's paper on Desert Lesser Whitethroat in the NE this bird looked very different in different lights - very uniform when we saw it this morning, with a very smooth transition in colour between a dull grey-buff back and dark head, (looking almost uniform above) and with no visible contrast between the crown and ear coverts.
However around 1pm there was much more contrast visible, with one observer noting contrasting ear coverts and more contrast between the head and mantle.
Other features were a relatively long tail (which showed limited white in the outer tail feathers - I saw it hovering to catch insects and it appeared only to have white on the outer edge of the outer tail feathers, in contrast to the pix from Sweden on Bjorn Anderson's website) non-contrasting coverts and only in very good light slightly dark centres to the tertials, and a rather short and stubby primary projection which just about extended over the base of the tail.
Some background - the only Lesser Whitethroat confirmed in HK is blythi - DNA was taken from a trapped bird a couple of years ago.
The bird can be seen here: http://www.hkbws.org.hk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=9354#9354
The Swedish bird can be seen here:
http://hem.fyristorg.com/nonne/Artsangare.html
The paper discussing the Teesside Desert Lesser Whitethroat is here:
http://www.surfbirds.com/ID%20Articles/dlwhitethroat.html
Hopefully there will be a definitive answer to this one, as there are more photos from good photographers to come, and two members of the HK Records Committee, one of whom saw the bird today have done extensive wrk on Lesser Whitethroat taxonomy in recent years.
Cheers
Mike
This is only the third Lesser Whitethroat record from Hong Kong and was found this morning by my mate Graham while we were out looking for a Pale-footed Bush Warbler in an urban park that has turned up some great birds this year.
As mentioned in Brian Small's paper on Desert Lesser Whitethroat in the NE this bird looked very different in different lights - very uniform when we saw it this morning, with a very smooth transition in colour between a dull grey-buff back and dark head, (looking almost uniform above) and with no visible contrast between the crown and ear coverts.
However around 1pm there was much more contrast visible, with one observer noting contrasting ear coverts and more contrast between the head and mantle.
Other features were a relatively long tail (which showed limited white in the outer tail feathers - I saw it hovering to catch insects and it appeared only to have white on the outer edge of the outer tail feathers, in contrast to the pix from Sweden on Bjorn Anderson's website) non-contrasting coverts and only in very good light slightly dark centres to the tertials, and a rather short and stubby primary projection which just about extended over the base of the tail.
Some background - the only Lesser Whitethroat confirmed in HK is blythi - DNA was taken from a trapped bird a couple of years ago.
The bird can be seen here: http://www.hkbws.org.hk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=9354#9354
The Swedish bird can be seen here:
http://hem.fyristorg.com/nonne/Artsangare.html
The paper discussing the Teesside Desert Lesser Whitethroat is here:
http://www.surfbirds.com/ID%20Articles/dlwhitethroat.html
Hopefully there will be a definitive answer to this one, as there are more photos from good photographers to come, and two members of the HK Records Committee, one of whom saw the bird today have done extensive wrk on Lesser Whitethroat taxonomy in recent years.
Cheers
Mike
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