ML134143951

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

It ain't the best photo, but it's my photo. Digiscoped. From the ABA Blog: 1. “Mystery” Shrike – California So let’s talk about likelihood for a second. Finding a vagrant bird is pretty unlikely. And for a bird to survive its vagrancy long enough to be discovered by a birder who can put a name to it is an even less likely event. Now let’s add a dash of hybridism into the mix. Hybrids are practically by definition unlikely and especially so as vagrants, with few exceptions. And for an apparent hybrid bird from a narrow hybrid zone in central Asia to end up in northern California, where it is observed by birders doing a census in a very underbirded location adds up to one of the single least likely incidents in the history of ABA birding. But that’s what happened with a weird shrike, originally identified as a Northern, then a Brown, then a Red-backed, then a whatever, was discovered in early March in Mendocino County, California. As the bird underwent molt over a period of several weeks it seemed, bizarrely, to change into something that could not be conclusively identified. In the Fall 2015 issue of North American Birds, Peter Pyle, Robert Keiffer, Jon Dunn, and Nial Moores lay out a pretty convincing case that this bird was a hybrid of Turkestan Shrike x Red-backed Shrike, two species of which neither have been recorded in the ABA Area. It’s a conclusion so mind-blowing that you could make an argument that this single bird was the weirdest thing ever found in the ABA Area. At very least, it’s a shoe-in for our craziest vagrant of 2015. http://blog.aba.org/2016/01/the-top-10-craziest-aba-vagrants-of-2015.html

Technical information

Model

SGH-T989

ISO

32

Focal length

4 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/2.7

Shutter speed

1/290 sec

Dimensions

2238 pixels x 1679 pixels

Original file size

392.97 KB