ML382070301
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
Observation details
*Rare, only one prior record for Louisiana in eBird and one prior record noted in the comments of that report. Bird seen here: (29.7213419, -91.8613112) but it flew west down the point. Sighting at about 10:40am. I was driving down the point, watching the wires for kingbirds, when a bird sitting on a wire behind a fishing camp caught my eye. I checked my rearview mirror and stopped in the road, as there was no shoulder to pull off from. I put my binoculars up and saw a yellow-bellied kingbird with an apparently dark chest and head, highlighted by a bright white malar. Immediately, I was thinking Cassin's, and pulled out my camera to fire off as many shots as possible, hopefully getting good enough documentation to seal the record. I was sending back of camera shots to the LOS facebook page to alert the community to the presence of the bird when I noticed a bird flying over the road, about 50 feet in the air. It was the kingbird! I followed underneath the bird in my car for about half a mile before I lost it. Three more trips up and down the point and a check of the state park nearby were not able to turn up the bird. I didn't ever get a good look at the tail, even when the bird was flying, because I was mostly focused on tracking it in flight and was fairly confident on the ID without it. Medium sized kingbird, dark yellow below with a gray chest. The lower part of the chest has some yellow in it, but not the pale gray - pale yellow transition of Western. The dark gray of the chest reaches the throat, contrasting strongly with the white malar. The head is the same dark gray color, contrasting also against the white malar and against a slightly darker mask. Bill small and thick, typical of the smaller yellow-bellied kingbirds. Never got a good look at the bird's dorsal side. From photos, details of the underside of the tail aren't really visible, it just looks dark. Feedback from various people all consistent with Cassin's Kingbird.
Technical information
- Model
- COOLPIX P950
- ISO
- 100
- Focal length
- 856.8 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire
- f-stop
- f/6.5
- Shutter speed
- 1/640 sec
- Dimensions
- 4608 pixels x 3456 pixels
- Original file size
- 3.63 MB