Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
Observation details
I got onto a thrush in the middle of the tree – a Swainson’s Thrush. It looked quite interesting as it didn’t appear to be a typical russet-backed SWTH – we were able to get scope views and both of us were able to digi-scope the thrush. It showed a complete eye-ring that appeared slightly buffy (not gray), but the supra-loral area was not all that pale and did not really connect with eye-ring to form spectacle appearance of typical SWTH. The spotting on the breast appeared quite bold with only hint suggestion of buffy – this was mostly blocked and the photos do not show the breast pattern well at all. It was hard to see if any gray tones were on face, especially auriculars, but I felt the gray tones were not present and it was just buffy indicating a SWTH. In addition, the eye-ring was complete, perhaps not very bold, but complete and appeared buffy rather than gray, so again indicating a SWTH. However, the bird was in shade dominated by green and yellowish tones so our confidence in our interpretations of these colors was not great. Curtis suggested that it could be a Gray-cheeked Thrush and insisted that they can have complete eye-rings much like this bird (he had some story to back up this assertion…). Soon the bird dropped to ground but disappeared quickly into the shrubbery. I tried the other side of the yard and saw the bird on the ground all too briefly before it went back into the tree. Two cats were now present. After a few more minutes, a thrush dropped to ground and Curtis got onto it – a typical russet-backed Swainson’s Thrush. God-dammit, were we that far off? This bird had a broken leg and showed evidence of damage elsewhere on body probably from a cat. It moved back into tree and we got good views of it struggling to stand on a small branch. Clearly, this bird was not going to last long at this place. We left confused but believing there was only one thrush in that yard. Somewhere down the road, Curtis looked at his photos and saw the legs of the thrush – they were fine, so holy shit, there were two thrushes there!!
Technical information
- Model
- Canon PowerShot ELPH 500 HS
- ISO
- 3200
- Focal length
- 18.8 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire, auto
- f-stop
- f/5.8
- Shutter speed
- 1/125 sec
- Dimensions
- 1654 pixels x 1240 pixels
- Original file size
- 397.1 KB