Three hours (06.30-09.30am) produced some interesting, scarce passage
migrants in the form of a female Blue-and-white/Zappey's Flycatcher, a Black-winged Cuckoo-shrike (my first on the patch since
April last year), a female Yellow-rumped Flycatcher and a single male
Ashy Minivet. More regular migrants/winterers included three Taiga
Flycatchers, three Asian Brown Flycatchers, two Yellow-browed Warblers,
and two Thick-billed Warblers. I also got brief views of what looked like an immature Cinnamon Bittern.
The ID of female Blue-and-white/Zappey's is unclear at the moment, from what I can gather. The Oriental Bird Club website states that identification criteria have not yet been determined, but Mark Brazil's Birds of East Asia states that female Zappeys is "darker or more rufous brown, with less white on the throat" and the illustration (for what it is worth?!) indicates that Zappey's has a less well defined white throat, and paler underparts than Blue-and-white.
The images I got (below) suggest quite a well-defined dark breast band and clearly demarcated throat, so based on the little detail available in the literature I would guess that this is a female Blue-and-white. My only previous record of a confirmed Blue-and-white Flycatcher was a male in the same tree on the same date in 2011!
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| Black-winged Cuckoo-shrike |
The ID of female Blue-and-white/Zappey's is unclear at the moment, from what I can gather. The Oriental Bird Club website states that identification criteria have not yet been determined, but Mark Brazil's Birds of East Asia states that female Zappeys is "darker or more rufous brown, with less white on the throat" and the illustration (for what it is worth?!) indicates that Zappey's has a less well defined white throat, and paler underparts than Blue-and-white.
The images I got (below) suggest quite a well-defined dark breast band and clearly demarcated throat, so based on the little detail available in the literature I would guess that this is a female Blue-and-white. My only previous record of a confirmed Blue-and-white Flycatcher was a male in the same tree on the same date in 2011!
1 comment:
The Cuckoo Shrike is also a female, judging from the noncontinuous white ring around the eye.
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