Basically a photo-essay of the Chideock Chiff. At..er...lunchtime I visited and took some photos. I am in the middle of reading up on Sibe Chiff and was interested to see how photos appeared in different lighting. Thankfully I was able to get shots in a few different places, and the light was pretty flat; no sun until I was just about to leave.
I shall mostly let the pictures do the talking.
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| Same time and place as first 3 shots, but notice how much browner it looks. I think the bird was slightly over-exposed in the first 3, and definitely a bit under-exposed in this one (which I have lightened a touch). |
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| Wish it had a spent a few minutes loafing right here. No chance. One shot, gone. |
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| Not a Bonelli's Warbler. Fact. |
Lots of colour variation in those images, depending on the light, angle, exposure, etc. Despite how it appears in some of those photos, in the field it was always warm-looking, and basically a pale buffish brown, with almost-white underparts. Depending on the angle, the obvious yellowish-green fringing on the secondaries, primaries and tail was apparent too, also the pale-based bill.
It responded very briefly to tristis song when first played, with intermittent wing-quivering for a few seconds, but quickly lost interest, and didn't do it again [incidentally, the Colyton WTW bird reacted in exactly the same way]. Unfortunately it never called once.
So, is it actually a Siberian Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita tristis)? Well, as far as I can gather on evidence thus far considered, it's definitely not a 'classic' tristis, which average somewhat darker and browner. But neither is it one of the seemingly rare and [possibly] unassignable 'grey and white' jobs either. In fact it seems to be of a type encountered quite frequently, like the Colyton bird...
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| The Colyton WTW bird from 11/12/2019 |
And what exactly is this type? As I say, I am still mid-research, but quite probably it is tristis. But, boy I wish the things would vocalise a bit!
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| Not a Chiffchaff! But a very welcome distraction. There were in fact 2 Firecrests. |
Looks very similar to the 3 or so tristis types I've seen/heard (plus 2 probable silent ones). Hope it does call for you! Amy
ReplyDeleteGood to know. Thanks Amy.
DeleteIf you really want to give up the will to live - or ever be bothered with another Chiffchaff try this.. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5714495/
ReplyDeleteLast night I read the paper on 'Patterns of genetic, phenotypic, and acoustic variation across a chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita abietinus/tristis) hybrid zone' (Shipilina et al) and am barely alive today. Think I'll give that one a miss, Mike. Thanks all the same!
DeleteAlternatively, stick with Martin Garners articles on Birding Frontiers and more particularly the Challenge Series book - then we can all sing from the same hymn sheet. Your description of song tapes is exactly as I have experienced on finding a tristis type bird, they respond once and never again - they obviously know its not worth responding to. none of the good Sibe candidates I have found have ever responded to collybita song (or Abietinus song - which sounds the same to my ears). Some of the Sibes I have experimented on have given song back and some calls, others just qing quivered and a quiet 'chip' 'chip' call back. I have never encountered a collybita which responds to Sibe Chiffchaff song. Even paler undersided, grey-naped and strong supercilium Chiffs that might be abietinus have only ever responded to collybita type song. We can muddy the waters with intergrades but lets not turn that water to mud..
ReplyDeleteYes, someone put me on to the Birding Frontiers articles - very helpful. Unfortunately I don't have the books. I shall press on! Despite watching two at Colyton WTW for some time today, I have yet to hear one of these recent birds call.
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