ML642003302

Détails de l'observation

Colby’s bird, continuing from the 13th. In little fenced-off woodlot at (42.0478431, -124.2855842). I lean toward this bird being the eastern subspecies (P. c. caerulea), but I'm not sure whether that can be confirmed. The call notes (which I heard about 6 times) sounded high-pitched and were given singly, sounding to me to be a better match for the eastern subsp., although this is subtle and perhaps unreliable. The upperparts color appeared more blue than gray, although again this is subjective, subtle, and lighting-dependent. The tail pattern perhaps was more Eastern-like, although I'm not sure how well understood the differences are and whether they're consistent -- and this bird appeared to be still growing molted-in feathers, complicating things. In the images, the second-outermost retrices appear to have not very much black, and the black seems to meet the white at a fairly narrow angle, although we can't really see enough of these feathers clearly. And finally, the bird was in the canopy of fairly high alder trees the entire time (a good 20 min. or more), which matches the habitat and behavior of the eastern subsp. I have uploaded a number of short video clips and screenshots from the videos that show the tail, in case these are useful to anyone in determining the subspecies. For now I will leave this sighting unidentified to subspecies.