ML585897131

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Wow. Wasn’t expecting this! I pulled into the parking lot near the Audubon house, and planned to take the dan Diego creek trail under campus drive to the AMBI spot. Shortly after starting my walk there, I noticed a wood-pewee here: (33.6600464, -117.8413021). I took some photos and got great looks. The bird then flew off towards the ponds and disappeared. About 25 minutes later, Tom Wurster showed up and we both got looks at it in the sycamores in the parking lot for about 3 minutes. It then flew off and diss appeared again-we never refound the bird. The bird was completely silent, which is why this is entered as a /. Visually, however, this bird appeared absolutely perfect for an Eastern. The lower mandible was nearly all orangeish, with a touch of dark at the tip. The upper mandible was pretty much dark with a splotching of orangeish here and there. The breast and underparts were mainly a dirty grayish brown, with no obvious patterns of anything. The birds wingbars were both pretty much the exact same boldness/brightness, and they both appeared somewhat messy. The bird’s shape overall seemed a little more like an Empid than a pewee, as is typical of eastern. The crown was very triangular, but at certain angles it appeared flatter. The bird’s tail was interesting-it appeared to have some sort of missing feather in between its outer primary-not sure what to say about it except that-but the photos show that it is odd looking. Again, this bird, very frustratingly, never called during my visit. I didn’t see it after 9:15am. Many birders started to show up and search-but it was never refound today. I have a few decent images which I’ll add when I get a chance. No clue where it went when we lost it. I Only Tom wurster saw it with me, everyone else showed up after we lost the bird. I will return tomorrow and try to refind it. This bird in my opinion, without hearing it, is best left as a /. I have included many photos, but some of the photos have the original photo and edited photo to avoid confusion with the bird’s plumage. I only cropped, sharpened, and corrected the exposure of the photos, I didn’t change anything at all. A fun, but frustrating experience.

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS R7

Lens

150-600mm F5-6.3 DG OS HSM | Contemporary 015

ISO

1000

Focal length

600 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/7.1

Shutter speed

1/1250 sec

Dimensions

1191 pixels x 819 pixels

Original file size

295.45 KB