ML132896851
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
Observation details
Howard spotted this bird foraging in either an Ironwood or a Palo Verde tree at the edge of the desert just off the northwestern corner of the golf course. We then saw it at least twice in this same area before losing it in the oleander hedge. When I first saw this bird, I thought it had some color on it suggesting Cassin's Vireo, but later views suggested instead that it was quite gray. My latter views suggested there was no color at all on a bird that was gray above and whitish below. The head and upperparts appeared to be medium-gray with no contrast evident between the head and back. The face was dominated by white spectacles that combined a well-defined supraloral stripe with an equally conspicuous eyering, but I noted no other pattern on the head. Odd for a Plumbeous Vireo was that the darker color of the face seemed to blend into the whitish throat without a sharp line of demarcation. The throat, breast, and belly were dull whitish, but the flanks appeared to be washed with gray or olive-gray. I was less sure about the undertail coverts, but they seemed to be whitish. The wings contrasted little with the back, yet I noted two relatively well-defined wingbars that extended across the tips of the greater and median coverts, and at least some striping on the inner remiges, if not all of them. Unfortunately, this bird was difficult to study in the field and it disappeared quickly before I was able to get really definitive views. I noted in the field that this was a plump bird that was at least as large as a Yellow-rumped Warbler, yet it had a plumper body, a proportionately larger head, a shorter and more stocky neck, and seemingly a shorter tail. It also had a relatively stout bill that tapered to a pointed tip along a noticeably decurved culmen. Later examination of my photos of this bird revealed that there was indeed some contrast between a gray head and a slightly olive back, that the bill was smaller than I would expect from a Plumbeous Vireo, and that there may even have been some yellowish tones to the edges on the remiges. Also, even though the flanks seem to show no yellowish tones, they are also not as conspicuously gray as I thought the last time I saw this bird, all suggesting that this was an unusually dull Cassin's Vireo.
Technical information
- Model
- Canon EOS 7D
- Lens
- EF400mm f/5.6L USM
- ISO
- 500
- Focal length
- 400 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire, auto
- f-stop
- f/8.0
- Shutter speed
- 1/640 sec
- Dimensions
- 2193 pixels x 1612 pixels
- Original file size
- 3.09 MB