ML492385261
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Adult, Unknown sex - 1
- Sounds
- Call
- Playback
- Playback not used
Observation details
Lifer! Continuing bird, originally found by Meg Barron and Ellyn Corey over a week ago, seen today at this location just southwest of the administration building: 37.393165,-121.955175. It was fairly active in a coniferous tree (some kind of fir, I think), but would also go still and silent for stretches. Eventually it flew over to a deciduous tree just across the street from the first one. With how close the mob was, I'm honestly a little surprised it didn't flush to another part of the park while I was there, but perhaps it either just doesn't care or is getting used to all the attention. As far as field marks go, this was a beautiful little bird. It's close to the same size as the Yellow-rumped warblers, but with a longer tail. It had white under-eye arcs, vent, undertail coverts, undertail, and large wing patches. The extent of the white in the tail includes much of R4, making this the nominate and most likely subspecies. Everything else on the bird was black except for the bright red belly and center of breast. It called regularly. If you were to create a continuum of calls that started at Black Phoebe and ended with House Sparrow chirps ("cheer-up" as I hear it), this bird's calls would be somewhere shy of the halfway mark (more like a Phoebe than a House Sparrow). They were individual, clear-tone, down-sloping and usually spaced 1.5-2.5 seconds apart. My responsibilities and time constraints are many, but most of eBird's October and Global (May) Big Days I try to set aside to go birding most of the day. This time I had to be home for the middle of the day due to another commitment, so with how long and well this bird has been showing, I figured it would be a good stop for the morning, and it didn't disappoint! I could have left shortly after getting my first (even worse) photos of the bird and had time for another stop before going home, but I'm glad I chose to stick around. I ended up rushing everywhere the rest of the day with pretty mixed results. Still, all those dips and misadventures help make these twitching successes all the sweeter. This bird is also an obscure milestone bird for me: 150 passerine species heard!
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
- Original file size
- 374.69 KB