This isn't strictly an ID thread. However, I'm posting it here because it's a follow-up to two older threads about White's Thrush and Scaly Thrush.
White's Thrush or Scaly Thrush?
Zoothera -Guiyang, Guizhou, China - Feb
In those threads, there was discussion on how to differentiate these (now) species. The number of retrices was one point, their colouration another, and the length and emargination pattern of the primaries was a third.
I don't want to re-litigate these threads.
However, in my local spot the Heijo Palace Site area in Nara City, Japan (near Osaka and Kyoto), we have four White's Thrush this year (often, but not always, one; sometimes two), and there are several more in the Nara Park section (with the famous Great Buddha Temple and the deer park) a couple of kilometres away, and also others in places only a few more kilometres away.
[Sidebar: In another thread a few weeks ago, I commented that there are very, very few Dusky Thrush here this year (and in recent years) whereas there used to be hundreds. It seems strange to walk around some days and see more White's Thrush than Dusky Thrush. Pale Thrush are in their usual numbers.]
I have been waiting and trying to get photos of the spread tail or spread wing of these White's, but failed - I don't think it's right to deliberately flush them at this season, so I just wait.
However, a friend of mine got an excellent photo of the fully spread tail of a bird in the Manyo Plant Garden in Nara Park and posted it on his hobby blog. I have asked him, and he's happy for me to post these photos here if it helps people and he doesn't want a named credit.
One of the things in the earlier two threads linked above was that I thought that birds whose spread tails I had managed to photograph in Nara had perhaps only twelve retrices. My friend's bird clearly has fourteen. And maybe someone can make something out of the view of the primaries also.
Anyway, I am posting these photos just as 'data'.
Photos 1-5 are my friend's photos from his blog. All the same bird.
Photos 6-7 are one bird from my patch posted in the linked threads; Photo 8 is another bird from the same location at a different time. These are re-posted just for ease of reference.
I post this hoping it will be of interest or help to anyone who participated in those two previous threads, and also others.
White's Thrush or Scaly Thrush?
Zoothera -Guiyang, Guizhou, China - Feb
In those threads, there was discussion on how to differentiate these (now) species. The number of retrices was one point, their colouration another, and the length and emargination pattern of the primaries was a third.
I don't want to re-litigate these threads.
However, in my local spot the Heijo Palace Site area in Nara City, Japan (near Osaka and Kyoto), we have four White's Thrush this year (often, but not always, one; sometimes two), and there are several more in the Nara Park section (with the famous Great Buddha Temple and the deer park) a couple of kilometres away, and also others in places only a few more kilometres away.
[Sidebar: In another thread a few weeks ago, I commented that there are very, very few Dusky Thrush here this year (and in recent years) whereas there used to be hundreds. It seems strange to walk around some days and see more White's Thrush than Dusky Thrush. Pale Thrush are in their usual numbers.]
I have been waiting and trying to get photos of the spread tail or spread wing of these White's, but failed - I don't think it's right to deliberately flush them at this season, so I just wait.
However, a friend of mine got an excellent photo of the fully spread tail of a bird in the Manyo Plant Garden in Nara Park and posted it on his hobby blog. I have asked him, and he's happy for me to post these photos here if it helps people and he doesn't want a named credit.
One of the things in the earlier two threads linked above was that I thought that birds whose spread tails I had managed to photograph in Nara had perhaps only twelve retrices. My friend's bird clearly has fourteen. And maybe someone can make something out of the view of the primaries also.
Anyway, I am posting these photos just as 'data'.
Photos 1-5 are my friend's photos from his blog. All the same bird.
Photos 6-7 are one bird from my patch posted in the linked threads; Photo 8 is another bird from the same location at a different time. These are re-posted just for ease of reference.
I post this hoping it will be of interest or help to anyone who participated in those two previous threads, and also others.
