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0 by digdeep1962 1 there are six species of malkohas on the malaysian list although one raffles s according to mtdna studies is not really a malkoha at all of these raffles s red billed and chestnut breasted are so distinctive that they are identifiable with all but the poorest of views the other three chestnut bellied black bellied and green billed are more similar to one another in plumage and although with good views they can be easily separated their furtive behaviour means that sometimes good views of the salient details such as tail length belly and vent colour and precise colours on the head are not easily obtained additionally juveniles are less distinctive than adults i won t go into features which are already described in field guides here but there is an additional detail not covered in literature that i have access to which can be surprisingly useful for determining identification especially if photographs are taken the shape of the nostril in chestnut bellied the nostril is a long slit which runs parallel to the line where the bill meets the lores in black bellied it is shorter and more triangular an apostrophe shape which runs vertically down from the top of the bill lores line at times appearing to be joined to the black of the lores in green billed it is more or less circular these apparently small differences are surprisingly obvious even in poor photos and in the field as malkohas characteristically stick their heads out of thick vegetation to look for prey this malkoha was viewed distantly in an area where green billed and chestnut bellied malkohas are known to occur but where black bellied had not been recorded previously the field guide diagnostic details are not easy to discern from this photo and the bird did not move to allow any other angles however the nostril shape can be clearly seen enabling an identification of black bellied malkoha to be confidently made the paler grey head than upperparts and blood red rather than orange facial skin suggest that this bird might be a black bellied malkoha however the nostril shape shows that it is in fact a chestnut bellied malkoha the belly and vent colouration were not visible in the poor light of the forest the head and facial skin colouration can be explained by the fact that this bird was a juvenile it was in the company of two adult chestnut bellied malkohas care needed note how the apparent shape of this adult chestnut bellied malkoha s nostril changes with angle looking rounder as the observer moves more directly below the plane of the bill nostril shape is best judged when the bird is viewed in profile posted in uncategorized tagged identification malkoha nostril 1 reply 14 how sure is sure enough posted on may 15 2020 by digdeep1962 reply i plan for this to be the last post in this series unless someone has a topic or burning question which you think i should cover mike had a couple more questions in response to the first post in this series what is an appropriate level of confidence in an identity is it worth submitting a record without knowing the species a potential first subalpine warbler sp in dubai gray s sakhalin leaf warbler in hk and he followed this up with this one in response to post 11 i would be interested to know with the benefit of 20 20 hindsight how or if you think your description of pom skua might have been framed to provide 100 proof did you not see enough or could you have written more that would have reasonably eliminated arctic skua since these two questions are somewhat related i will deal with them together first full disclosure here is the description i submitted accompanying those two awful photos the first of the two individuals was spotted resting on the sea it was too far to photograph with my lens but was visible for 10 minutes or more as the boat was not moving at that point the second bird flew south past the stern of the ship and several very distant photos were taken posture size shape the bird on the water had the size and shape of a gull the bird in flight was also gull like though with a more powerful flight physical appearance bird 1 sat on sea dark cap and upperparts and thick dark breastband face and neck whitish shape of tail projection beyond wings could not be determined due to range structure felt to be too bulky for either long tailed or arctic upperparts too dark for long tailed bird 2 see photos below flew with direct powerful wingbeats past the stern of the boat about halfway to the horizon dark cap pale underbody and dark wings and deep chested appearance typical of pomarine what do you think is there enough here to eliminate all reasonable doubt was i sure they were pomarine skuas yes did i provide enough evidence for this record to be accepted i think not a question i always ask myself before i submit a record these days is would i accept this record if i hadn t seen it on the basis of the evidence i have provided i try to put myself in the shoes of those assessing the record and see it through their eyes these days i would probably have put the skuas down as probables because i could not prove the identification to others i just didn t see enough so i think it comes down to confidence that you can demonstrate that you correctly identified the bird past experience helps but it s not essential i ve submitted quite a few records of birds which i had never seen in the flesh before mike s last question was how to make a case for unlikely records e g himalayan griffon in singapore i think this comes down to the answer to two questions 1 how confident am i that i ve identified the bird correctly and can prove it 2 is there a possibility that the bird might have got there as a result of human interference to some extent the second question is the job of the records committee to determine which means you only really have to worry about the first but if i do see a bird which i know might have suspect origins i like to do a bit of my own research into regional patterns of vagrancy whether or not other birds of the same species occurred in the region at the same time and to what extent the species is traded or kept in captivity i also want to pay special attention to unusual plumage damage or bare part abnormalities which might indicate that the bird had recently been in captivity this woolly necked stork was the first recorded in malaysia for over a century since large waterbirds are a favourite in bird parks and zoos i did a careful check for leg rings and feather damage around the eye and bill and the tips of the flight feathers after the sighting i also made contact with jurong bird park in singapore to find out if they kept the species they don t posted in uncategorized leave a reply 13 the bird the whole bird and nothing but the bird posted on may 11 2020 by digdeep1962 reply mike kilburn s third question to the first post in this series was how to manage atypical contradictory plumage bare parts call that do not fit the classic typical description i d like to use the quiz i posed at the end of the last post to help address this question my challenge was take a close look at this picture and tell me what colour the eye ring is the picture was taken by lim kim chye and i reproduce it here with his kind permission this bird was identified as a rusty breasted cuckoo on account i suspect of the orange extending up to the throat on plaintive the throat and breast are usually grey one of the key distinguishing features of these two species at all ages is the colour of the eye ring greyish or greyish brown in plaintive and yellow in rusty breasted so what colour is the eye ring of this bird the answers i got from various respondents were dull yellow orange yellow pinkish and pale grey quite a variety in the last post i said that we tend to be particularly bad at judging pinks oranges and yellows and this seems to prove my point in this montage i ve progressively enlarged the eye in the photograph without doing anything to change the colours in the last rectangle i used the colour picker tool in photoshop to pick up the colour of the lightest part of the eye ring at the top so that s the actual colour of the eye ring as it appears in this photograph brown maybe those of us who thought the eye ring was yellow or orange were looking at the contrast between it and the red eye or maybe since the bird is labelled a rusty breasted cuckoo we knew the eye ring should be yellow and were influenced accordingly so the eye ring does not appear to be yellow a contradictory bare part detail which does not fit the typical description what do we do with that look at the whole bird i ve lost count of the number of times i ve heard or seen people identify a bird based on a single supposedly diagnostic plumage trait i ve done it myself it s a recipe for disaster don t do it what about the rest of the bird the grey head and chin grading into the rich peach orange throat and underparts looks good for rusty breasted and not plaintive the wings are browner than the head which is not particularly helpful since both species share this feature ditto the orangey yellow feet the undertail shows broad whitish bars which go across the whole feather a feature of plaintive cuckoo but not adult rusty breasted which has much smaller whitish notches along the edges of the tail feathers so despite the anomalous peach coloured underparts extending up to the chin this bird must be a plaintive cuckoo my thanks to ingkayut sa ar for pointing this out to me i can t say i would have picked it out otherwise in general atypical characteristics in a bird which you think you know the identity of should set off alarm bells they may be explainable and your original identification may be right but it is always worth double checking and taking a cautious approach posted in uncategorized tagged a beginner s guide to wader identification description documentation documenting field notes leave a reply 12 blind man s buff or tawny posted on may 7 2020 by digdeep1962 2 i m using a series of excellent questions sent by mike kilburn as a springboard to explore issues related to writing and submitting descriptions of rarities 2 one man s buff is another man s tawny or brownish likewise with perceptions of length of bill tail etc how to deal with subjective perceptions in an earlier post i suggested that length of features like bill legs primary projection etc is best described in comparison to some other feature on the bird so for example on a perched raptor how far down the tail does the wingtip reach half the tail length a third equal to the length of the tail on a flying raptor how long is the tail in relation to the width of the wingbase on a wader how long is the bill in relation to the distance across the head or between the bill base and the eye in making comparison between two unvarying lengths some measure of objectivity can be obtained foot or leg projection beyond the tail is hard to describe in relation to another part of the bird s body but one can make an estimate such as just the toe tips as in the bar tailed godwits half the foot asian dowitcher and the whole foot black tailed godwit on grey faced buzzards in flight the tail best measured from the trailing edge of the wing is longer than the width of the wing base so it has relatively narrow wings and a longish tail when perched the wingtips reach the tail tip so it has relatively long wings describing colours is even more challenging than describing length as mike suggests people s perception of colour varies just ask my wife her brown is my olive green and we have limited vocabulary to describe a myriad of subtleties fortunately in most cases the key is comparison again so whether one describes a redstart s tail as rufous red orange or chestnut it s more important to note that it is more rufous red orange chestnut than the rest of the bird s upperparts plumage patterns are usually more important than colours in isolation so on a warbler is there a brighter secondary wing panel or does the alula stand out as being noticeably darker than the rest of the wing is the eye stripe the same colour as the crown or distinctly darker this is an area where taking notes while in the field can be extremely valuable photographs don t lie but they might not tell the whole truth a paradise flycatcher photographed by chin choong liung each photograph seems to tell a different story about the extent of dark grey on the head only sustained and careful field observation would be able to discern which of these is more representative of the bird s appearance sometimes description of colour in isolation is important the colour of a wader s or a gull s legs the colour of an eye ring or the precise shade of the upperparts of a gull or tern and in truth we are generally not good at this 1 we tend to overuse the descriptions black and white pure black or white is rare on bird plumage it s usually a better practice to use terms like dark very dark blackish or pale bright whitish how much black or white is there on this blyth s pipit s head and upperparts apart from the pupil not a lot 2 we seem to be particularly bad at discerning between shades of pink yellow and orange try describing the pale part of the pipit s bill in the photo above for example that s partly because colour is reflected light and as lighting conditions change constantly so will our perceptions of colour again over reliance on photos is not helpful this is another area where field notes taken while watching a bird over a period of time can be more reliable than single photos finally it s good to remember that a good description bases identification on multiple factors not just one or two characteristics so even if our perception of some colours is off the rest of the description should hopefully override this i ll end with a bit of a quiz question take a close look at this picture and tell me what colour the eye ring is posted in uncategorized tagged description documenting 2 replies 11 submitting a description of a rare bird posted on may 4 2020 by digdeep1962 1 mike kilburn posed some excellent questions in this blog post which i promised to respond to so here goes 1 is it worth submitting records if the information is incomplete i e not all parts of the bird are seen tail on a black throated thrush in hk it is relatively rare that an observer manages to observe absolutely everything the bird may not be seen in flight or it may not vocalise for example the important thing is to be honest about this in the description incomplete details do not necessarily mean that the record cannot be deemed acceptable in the case you mention however the detail not seen is critical because the presence or absence of rufous in the tail determines identification so should you submit the record the advantage of submitting the record is that it adds to a body of information from which patterns of occurrence may be inferred in the future even if the record is not de...
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