ML79130581

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

I was having a Sunday evening birding at my favorite birding spot inside campus, SAC. Shishir joined with me around 5 o'clock. Around 5.30 pm, while looking for some retiring birds in the sky, noticed a soaring raptor and looked through the camera. On the first look itself, the 'raptor' turned out to be a Christmas gift for me. Forgot to click for a moment because of the excitement, but then started clicking countinuously to get as many id shots as possible and told Shishir to do the same. The bird was very far and it was almost dark by that time. Both of us managed to get some good enough shots for identification, I believe. The bird made another one or two circles in the sky and disappeared. I only knew that it was a Frigatebird, didn't know exactly which species. Sent all the photos to Dipu K and below are his comments: Presence of axillary spurs eliminates Greater. But, then it becomes tricky. The presence of black in the upper belly/breast possibly eliminates female Christmas. Now, male Christmas is an all dark bird with white central belly. The way that black is developing doesn't look right for that (the white belly patch should be bigger). So, by the process of elimination, looks like Lesser Frigatebird. We are trying to get more expert opinion on this. Tentatively putting this one as Lesser for the time being. UPDATE (10/1/2018): Msg from Dipu - 'David James confirmed that this bird is a second cycle Lesser Frigatebird. He said it is tough to sex it at this point.'

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS 7D

ISO

400

Focal length

400 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/5.6

Shutter speed

1/400 sec

Dimensions

1800 pixels x 1200 pixels

Original file size

1.88 MB