Hi All,
I looked at Jordan's pictures on Thursday evening and determined that the
flycatcher at Clapp looked more like a Dusky to me. It appeared to have a
long tail, a shorter primary projection, and did not have a very strongly
notched tail. Then Anthony sent his email about the eBird reviewers'
conclusions and I was pretty proud of myself. I am not a fan of IDing birds
based on photographs, especially for birds that are so similar to other
species. A bird's appearance can quickly change based on whether it is
relaxed, alert, cold, or simply in motion. Nonetheless, I was fairly
convinced it was a Dusky and I wanted to watch a difficult to ID flycatcher
that had been confirmed, so Jim K and I visited Clapp this afternoon. We
spent 2.5 hrs. watching it and I started to lean towards it being a
Hammond's. The tail appeared to be short and the primary projections long,
but the tail was usually only slightly notched and the head was rounded the
majority of the time. It spent time flycatching along both the top and
middle sections of the bushes and at the top of the tallest tree. It would
appear as though Sibley's note of "best distinguished by voice" was holding
true. Hammond's and Dusky are extremely similar and although I can't find
the info online, I'm sure that these two were taxonomically lumped together
at some point in the not too distant past. Tricky, tricky, flycatcher. Then
I got lucky (hopefully). It spent 4-5 minutes calling and I had my
microphone. I ran the recording through Cornell's BirdNET and it gave a
probability of 1 (the highest possible) to a Hammond's Flycatcher (I have
attached a screenshot). I do not know how much to trust BirdNET and I do
not have an ear for matching basic calls myself, but I hope that others do
and that a species can be determined from my recording. It is the most
frequent and loudest chip in the recording. I have put it down as a
Hammond's/Dusky for now. If it does turn out to be a Hammond's, kudos to
everyone who went and observed the bird and came to that conclusion! And
this is only the beginning of the flycatchers and spring migration... :D
https://ebird.org/checklist/S84316546
Jennifer
--
Jennifer Miller
Lubbock, TX
(o,o)
/)_)
" "
Blog - http://foundnature.weebly.com/index.html
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