ML20151071
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Juvenile, Unknown sex - X
Media notes
iPhonescoped
Observation details
**rare; first eBird record for Millennium Park found yesterday (10am and 3pm) by Mary Ellen McMahon; after much searching along with Sean Williams, I relocated it today at 9:12AM and then we watched it until about 9:30. We saw it in the dead tree swamp off the Blue Heron Trail, best seen by walking through the woods to the swamp edge just before crossing the second wooden bridge as you enter the Blue Heron Trail from Millennium Park. It was feeding sometimes in the tops of the snags, sometimes about 2/3 of the way up, doing multiple flycatching sallies but with several minute periods just perched. Twice it gave abrupt 'kip!' notes. After getting good looks and these photos (Sean Williams got SLR images, maybe in flight), it flew high and heading out to the NNE, possibly over to Brook Farm. Despite confusion between my possible Scissor-tailed Flycatcher from two nights ago and a couple reports yesterday, photos by Mary Ellen now confirm that she saw a Western Kingbird at 10am, since she returned at 3pm and got clear Western Kingbird photos from the same location (which was exactly where Sean and I had the bird today). A rather dull yellow belly on this bird, but identification straightforward with a black squared off tail showing crisp white on the outer rectrix, a slight notch in the tail tip., and a very pale gray head blending to the yellow belly. The wing coverts were strongly fringed with pale, along with the color of the belly indicating a hatch-year bird. From above, the tail does show a prominent buffy margin at the tip, recalling Cassin's Kingbird. My suspicion is that this bird may hunt this swamp in the morning and evening and may roost with the large number of robins here. Possibly it is also joined at night by a Scissor-tailed coming from other areas...
Technical information
- Model
- iPhone 5c
- Lens
- iPhone 5c back camera 4.12mm f/2.4
- ISO
- 50
- Focal length
- 4.1 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire, auto
- f-stop
- f/2.4
- Shutter speed
- 1/1695 sec
- Dimensions
- 3264 pixels x 2448 pixels
- Original file size
- 1.38 MB