From time to time I will post a photo of a so-called "quiz bird", of course, always a woodpecker. This will allow you all to test your ID skills on a family of birds that, on the face of it, is not that difficult to ID, but which in the field (the woods) often only offer brief glimpses, take up unusual poses or are obscured by vegetation. The first in this series is here on the left. The ID sections in this blog should be enough to facilitate a correct ID. Good luck. And do let me know your answer.
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
Quiz Woodpecker 1
From time to time I will post a photo of a so-called "quiz bird", of course, always a woodpecker. This will allow you all to test your ID skills on a family of birds that, on the face of it, is not that difficult to ID, but which in the field (the woods) often only offer brief glimpses, take up unusual poses or are obscured by vegetation. The first in this series is here on the left. The ID sections in this blog should be enough to facilitate a correct ID. Good luck. And do let me know your answer.
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3 comments:
All right, I'll go out on that limb. You haven't given us much to go on, but the outermost visible rectrix is unspotted and the flanks faintly streaked: that's a Syrian Woodpecker, then, right? And what about age? There is a clear 'molt limit' in the remiges, brown secondaries and inner primaries contrasting with blackish outers.
How embarrassing if I'm wrong--but you're the picid guy, not me!
Rick
Rick, YES, correct. You win an all-inclusive tour to see Ivory-billed Woodpecker in those swamps ! All-inclusive, that is, except for the bird... Anyway, the first thing, I suppose, was to narrow it down to 2 species: Syrian and Great Spotted, then eliminate Great Spotted due to the black outer tail feathers, with the pinkish undertail coverts as back-up. Now you tell me the age!
Retained secondaries mean that it has not yet gone through a complete pre-basic molt, so it is an HY/SY bird, depending on the calendar date of the photo.
Rick
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