Mystery Bird #11 - The Answer
Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2010 8:18 pm
This month we gave you an easy one!!?? Well, easy enough to narrow the choices down to very few anyway. It's a passerine, and it is unstreaked, and it has a "normal" length tail, and it has no discernable colours except shades of brown. Surely it is either a Whitehead or a Brown Creeper? Maybe your judgement is coloured by the Island on which you live? (Not in fact true!)
My identification, when I first saw the photograph, was based purely on the tones of brown. Brown Creepers have a warmth to the brown of the wings and especially the tail that this bird lacks. Whiteheads in contrast have a washed out dusty brown colouration which is exactly what is in the photograph. Whiteheads also show that spikey, scruffy tail when the plumage is worn. "But it's head isnt white.." the Brown Creeper camp cries. Well that's OK for a female or immature Whitehead ;and that is just what this bird is. A truck-load of chocolate fish to Simon Fordham for gettingthe bird, location and date correct!!!! Neil will add a more helpful shot of the same bird soon.
I think we have come to the end of this quiz. Igor Debski has got all 11 answers correct and the only people who might have caught up with him got this month wrong (!). So Igor claims the prize, but it seems that none of this was particularly easy. If you got more than half of your attempts right I think you did pretty well.
Thankyou to all who participated. I hope some or all of you will have learnt something and, at least as importantly, had some fun.
We will start quiz series #2 next month.
cheers
My identification, when I first saw the photograph, was based purely on the tones of brown. Brown Creepers have a warmth to the brown of the wings and especially the tail that this bird lacks. Whiteheads in contrast have a washed out dusty brown colouration which is exactly what is in the photograph. Whiteheads also show that spikey, scruffy tail when the plumage is worn. "But it's head isnt white.." the Brown Creeper camp cries. Well that's OK for a female or immature Whitehead ;and that is just what this bird is. A truck-load of chocolate fish to Simon Fordham for gettingthe bird, location and date correct!!!! Neil will add a more helpful shot of the same bird soon.
I think we have come to the end of this quiz. Igor Debski has got all 11 answers correct and the only people who might have caught up with him got this month wrong (!). So Igor claims the prize, but it seems that none of this was particularly easy. If you got more than half of your attempts right I think you did pretty well.
Thankyou to all who participated. I hope some or all of you will have learnt something and, at least as importantly, had some fun.
We will start quiz series #2 next month.
cheers