ML243056101

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Found by Alix d’Entremont and Kathleen MacAuley on Jun-07, 2020. Sandra and I were in the area Jun-08, 2020 and so took a wander down to Chebogue Point. There was nothing in the Willows but the farm has a small yard with a couple of shrubs and we saw an empid in there. The first impression was that it was greenish and obviously so. We set to ruling out Alder and Willow but it was silent. It did respond visually to Acadian Playback, ignoring all other species’ calls. It remained silent though. It was obviously too big for a Least, the bill was hefty and it lacked the overall pale quality of a Least. It wasn’t as green as a Yellow-bellied and the eye-ring was too subdued, the bill too large. To me it looked nearer in shape to Willow, rather than Alder, deportment or whatever you want to call it. The lack of a peaked head bothered me, which is why I discounted calling it Acadian at the time but I wasn’t going to have a Dusky Flycatcher situation again (2019, same bush, same branch!) and so I put out an image via our Facebook messenger group and suggested people take a look. My camera was set to over-expose slightly and so the images don’t convey the green hue of the upper parts very well. One feature that was notable was the slight warmth to the upper tail. This was obvious when it flew, a touch of rust about it. After we got home I checked our bird against Alix and Kathleen’s, he’d sent an image earlier after I’d posted mine, we didn’t know about their bird until then. It is the same bird, the eye-ring matches, amongst other things, obviously. On our eBird checklist we went for empid sp., pending. After hearing the unidentified empids calls and song on Alix and Kathleen’s eBird checklist I thought I could hear an element of Pacific-slope about it and sent a link to Alix. He contacted Dave Bell who would know that stuff being now based out west and he said Acadian. Listening to the song on Xeno Canto and reviewing my images (cropped only), I agree it is Acadian.

Technical information

Model

DMC-FZ2500

ISO

320

Focal length

176 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/11.0

Shutter speed

1/125 sec

Dimensions

840 pixels x 735 pixels

Original file size

139.15 KB