ML149079871

Age and sex

Unknown age, Female - X

Media notes

This wintering, female American Redstart, present since initially reported on 9 January 2019 by David Rankin, was here photographed by Curtis A. Marantz on 31 March 2019 on the University of California campus, Riverside, Riverside County, California.

Observation details

After hearing “sweet,” chip calls coming from one of the live oaks in the courtyard north of the Humanities and Social Sciences building, I tracked down the continuing redstart, which spent several minutes moving actively about the middle levels of these oaks. I took several photos and observed this bird for a short time before it moved off and disappeared, not to be seen again. This was a small passerine with a bill that was short and slim, a slim body, and a relatively long tail. The bill was slim throughout its length and it would have extended backward on the face to a point near the rear edge of the eye. The forehead appeared to be weakly sloping and the crown was gently rounded on a head that was unremarkable in size for a warbler. The neck was relatively short and inconspicuous, yet it seemed longer than those of the Yellow-rumped Warblers, and this bird’s body was noticeably smaller and slimmer than that of a Yellow-rump. The wingtips appeared to reach right about to the tips of the tapered undertail-coverts, but I was unable to see the primary projection from below. The notably tail long appeared to be about as long as the head and body combined, and it was square-tipped to weakly notched, but this bird did not fan the tail conspicuously, so it often appeared parallel-sided or at most weakly flared. I cannot now remember anything about the legs or feet. This was a subtly marked warbler with rather dull coloration. The forehead, crown, and auriculars were medium-gray, if not a shade lighter. I further noted a subtly paler, gray supraloral-stripe that was narrow yet relatively well-defined as it extended from the base of the bill over the eye, but it did not appear to continue behind the eye. Accentuating the supraloral stripe was a dusky loral-stripe that connected the bill with the leading edge of the eye, but it too did not appear to continue behind the eye. The throat was creamy-whitish from the chin down to its junction with the breast, and this same color extended down across the center of the breast and through the belly, rear flanks, and undertail coverts, but the sides of the breast and foreflanks were lemon-yellow. The underside of the closed tail was yellow for about the basal half before merging sharply with a black tip that covered about the distal half of what could be seen of the closed tail. I only once saw briefly the spread tail, when I thought the center was darker, but I did not see this at all well. Given that I saw this bird mostly from below, my views of the upperparts were not as good as those of the underparts. What I could see was that the wings and seemingly also the back were darker and more brownish than the head, but I never clearly saw the wingtips, the upperside of the tail, or potentially, the center of the back. The wings were also rather uniformly dark, yet I noted a narrow band of yellow that extended across either the tips of the greater coverts, or probably more likely, the bases of the secondaries. I did not notice a bend in this stripe that would have indicated that the yellow continued onto the primaries, but I easily could have missed this given that I did not see this part of the wing all that well. I thought the bill and eyes were dark, but I failed to notice the precise colors of each, and I cannot even remember this much about the legs or feet.

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS 7D Mark II

Lens

EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM

ISO

800

Focal length

400 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/6.3

Shutter speed

1/640 sec

Dimensions

1980 pixels x 1305 pixels

Original file size

4.4 MB