ML424881311

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

I was watching the bird through my bins before people called it out. It was a good distant out west of the park but fortunately was cruising our direction coming it closer. My first impression was ZTHA so I put my camera up, locked in on focus, and waited for it to get closer. As I watch it in the camera eye I'm thinking this is no ZTHA because it was the wrong shape having more broad wings, short tail, and brighter contrast under wing pattern. Plus the tail was just wrong. So I snapped photos, then went back to my bins. Then someone near me yelled STHA and I was just stumped. It was a Dark Morph, all dark body, dark wings underneath with white linings and a dark black trailing edge band. The wing tips were dark but "fingers" were spaced narrow and short. Proportion of tail to overall size of bird was short. Overall size of bird was hard for me to gauge since it was alone. Having first thought ZTHA, I thought it was near that size. Then someone said they thought it was a Harlan's RTHA which I have almost no experience with so that sent my brain into a real scramble. Fortunately really good birders set us straight to the ID being in fact STHA. After a few minutes of the bird's disappearance, it was relocated much higher up and I was able to get a few more pics and scope views.

Technical information

Model

NIKON D500

ISO

400

Focal length

500 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/8.0

Shutter speed

1/640 sec

Dimensions

1167 pixels x 991 pixels

Original file size

142.96 KB