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he 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 deemed acceptable on its own here s another example red billed starlings like most sturnids are commonly traded and so here in malaysia there is a fair chance that individuals encountered in the wild may be escaped cage birds but if all records are submitted it should eventually be possible to determine whether there are any seasonal patterns which might suggest genuine vagrancy or otherwise so i would favour submission i would add that there are two types of record submission the commonest is a submission which makes a claim that a certain species has been seen and the records committee then assesses the validity of that claim so in this case the observer could decide whether to submit a claim of black throated thrush or of black throated black throated thrush hybrid the other type of submission is more speculative here s a description of a bird i saw what do you think of it in such a case there is no claim to be assessed though the committee might subsequently recommend that you submit one the malaysian records committee tries to avoid the accept reject dichotomy although those terms are still commonly used we instead think in terms of proven unproven so an accepted record is one which we feel the evidence provided proves the identification beyond reasonable doubt a rejected record is one where the evidence provided does not reach that level of confidence it does not mean that we think the observer has behaved dishonestly or that they were mistaken it just signifies that the evidence supplied left room for doubt here are some pictures of a skua i saw with simon buckell in march 2008 off penang we saw two of them both of us identified both of the birds as pomarine skuas we d both seen plenty before i wrote a pretty good description of what we saw i was chairman of the records committee at the time the record was rejected i felt quite proud of the committee i was 100 certain of my identification but i also agreed that i did not provide enough evidence for this record to be 100 proven fortunately i ve seen plenty more since then a little closer posted in uncategorized tagged description field notes submitting a record 1 reply 10 you think you ve found a rarity now what posted on may 1 2020 by digdeep1962 reply as bill oddie once wrote one of the big the differences between birding and train spotting is the element of chance if you re an avid train spotter with enough money and time and an accurate train timetable you can see every train out there with some level of certainty with birds things are much less predictable and it s precisely this element of chance which makes birding so exciting and yes addictive over the last 40 odd days many of us have been confined to our homes by the covid19 virus i decided to try to spend some time outdoors every day to see what birds are around my home i have fairly recently moved house at the beginning of the period everything was new everything was interesting but after 6 weeks of seeing more or less the same species in more or less the same places at more or less the same time of day it is the chance of the thrill of finding a new bird for my patch which keeps me going out it s the same with birding your local area your state your country or even for some people the entire planet everyone loves to see something new the fact that seeing something new is desirable can itself be a problem the desire to see a new bird can mess with our head and mistakes can be made because we have a natural bias to want it to be something rare rather than something common so there s a need for caution when i come across something which looks a bit different i can feel it physically the heart starts to beat a little faster and the adrenaline starts flowing nine times out of ten that excitement is short lived as i realise on closer inspection or with a clearer view that what i thought might be something rare is in fact something common spoon billed sandpiper is the holy grail of east asian wader watchers so it s natural that the lowest bird in this frame would make the heart leap but is it one this process of re evaluation and admitting when one has made a mistake is healthy and should not be a cause for shame everyone makes mistakes it s just that most of us don t want to admit them if i am birding with someone else i would much rather they call my attention to a bird they think is rare even if it turns out not to be than for them to say nothing until they are sure and it has disappeared from view so first impressions can be mistaken and that s ok rarities are called rarities because they don t come along very often another angle reveals that the spoon at the end of this bird s bill is actually a lump of mud if i think i might have found something unusual here are the first things i try to do stay on the bird the temptation might be to immediately look away try to get others onto the bird and in the excitement it s easy to lose it altogether so i try to fix the position of the bird in my mind by noting its position relative to other birds or bits of vegetation etc until i am pretty confident i can refind it again if i don t think i can confidently refind it i will keep watching the bird while trying my best to describe where it is to others present i will try to keep watching it until i am as certain as i can be of what i am seeing or at least until i am sure it s something new making mental notes of the key identification features i can see as soon as i have these if it s feasible i will switch to the camera to try to get some photos or to a recording device if the bird is calling and...
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