ML512950781

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Media notes

Grayish back, some yellow color on front of face (more so than the yellow supraloral spot found in BTYW) fades to white towards the back, upside-down crescent beneath eye, dark face patch is bottlenecked but not disconnected from nape by thick white stripes above and below it.

Observation details

Female-type foraging in peppers, alders, maybe sycamores, and some exotic trees near the parking lot by the beach club. It looked like a Townsend’s Warbler at first glance, but I quickly noticed how pale it was. Instead of bright yellow, it was ghostly whitish. This bird shows a similar facial pattern to TOWA - yellow eyebrow mark and mirroring stripe underneath the dark eye patch. However, the posterior portions of these two lines fade from lemon-yellow to white. And while the dark face patch does not connect broadly to the nape, the yellow-white lines bordering it both above and below still do not converge towards the back of the face, as would be the case in Townsend's. Also note the faint upside-down pale crescent underneath the eye, giving it the inverse "eyebag" appearance of a TOWA, not the completely masked appearance of BTYW. In the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th, photos, there is a noticeable "cape" of gray on the nape and upper back (BTYW), in addition to the streaked olive back (TOWA). While the lighting is altered in the last three images, some of the intermediate marks (upside-down eye crescent, pattern of stripes above and below, etc.) are still visible. This may be a bit more of an anecdotal mark, but the last photo seems to show a bill larger and blunter-tipped than TOWA. Note: some people have said the photos taken were of different birds. Just to clarify, all of the attached photos show the same bird. It was one of the only passerines foraging in the area, the others being a kinglet, YRWA, and an adult male Townsend's, none of which this bird associated with at any point during my observation.

Technical information

Model

COOLPIX P1000

ISO

800

Focal length

306 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/6.3

Shutter speed

1/500 sec

Dimensions

2272 pixels x 1704 pixels

Original file size

2.01 MB