Comments:
This bird is facing directly away from us. The
most obvious thing that jumps out at us is the reddish color on the
top of the head. The red appears to run down the middle of the head,
and is bordered by black on both sides. That is important and we will
get back to it later. First I want to take a look at the wings
though. From this angle we can’t get an ideal look at the wing, but
we can see quite a bit. There appears to be a wing-bar and the
secondaries are quite yellow. Looking closely at the base of the
secondaries there is a black patch separating the yellow and the white
wing-bar. I admit I had never noticed this before, but it is a common
characteristic in both Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglets.
Sibley shows it well. Look closely at the pictures in Sibley and
compare it with the photo – I think you could ID this bird just by
black pattern in the secondaries and primary coverts. More than
likely this wouldn’t be very handy in the field, but an interesting
thing to look for and might be good for a bird quiz! Going back to the
crown – the thing that tripped a lot of you up was the red color.
That should make this a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, right? Actually it
doesn’t. Male Golden-crowned Kinglets are surprisingly red or orange,
especially toward the back of the head. The black borders are the
give away. Ruby-crowned Kinglets don’t have black borders on their
crown, but Golden-Crowned Kinglets do.
Note: This was the last quiz of this round. The last round
we only had 1 person get all the quizzes correct, but this time there
were 3 and quite a few people with 5 correct answers. Congratulations
to Leah Lewis, Weston Smith, and Cliff Weisse for getting 100%. I put
the 3 names in a hat and my wife picked Leah Lewis as the winner of
this round. The prize is a copy of Birds of Brazil by Deotato Souza.
Congrats Leah. The next round starts with the next quiz and will end
with the December quiz. Good Luck.
|
