Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Adult Male - X
Media notes
This photo beautifully show the densely warm-hued color of this godwit's neck, head, and broadly barred tertials, as well as its spectacularly golden bill (tip excepted). It also excellently shows what sometimes, as here, looks like two bright-white arcs, one below and one above the eye. Actually, the white mark above the eye also extends forward above the dark lore, but that extension often is not obvious. Photo ML45248171 herewith shows, though, the case where the white line may be seen forward of the eye, running over the dark lore, and where the lower "white arc" is not visible. It all depends on how the light strikes the eye and rebounds back to the viewer and/or camera.
Observation details
This photo shows the warm copper "glow" of this bird's long, graceful neck and head,and the deep, brilliant copper barring of its tertials. The brightly colored tertials favor its being subspecies islandica, rather than the only geographically reasonable alternative subspecies, limosa. Very much in favor of its being the islandia subspecies is the rounded head--shown also, and even better, in others of my photos--which is quite different than flat-appearing head of the limosa subspecies. This species' white rump patch is exposed here, as is the straight black border of the back at the white rump patch's upper margin. The black tail rules out its being the descriptively named Bar-tailed Godwit. This photo nicely shows the dark loral line of this species, but that is not unique to this species. The bird above the godwit is a Glossy Ibis. In the field, as well as in this photo, it appeared larger than the godwit.
Technical information
- Dimensions
- 2186 pixels x 1458 pixels
- Original file size
- 641.19 KB