sandee@sun16 (Daan Sandee) (08/31/90)
In article <6881@milton.u.washington.edu> amber@scott.biostat.washington.edu writes: >Last weekend at a park in Carnation, Washington ... >What I think I saw: > >A large flycatcher, about the same size as the Cedar Waxwing that was >there too. Bill, orange and black, thick. I really think it was an >Olive-sided Flycatcher because it had dark flanks with white (to yellowish) >from neck to toes --all the way down the breast, that is. But it was so >difficult to identify. I'm not really sure if that is what I saw. Did >not see any white tufts behind/between the wings on the back. > >On the branch briefly with this bird was another bird which I would >have identified as one of the Empidonax flycatchers. It was smaller, >by what looked to be almost three inches. Much lighter colored above, >all dark bill (?) > >The problem is, the person I was with was saying that the first bird >was one of the Empidonax flycatchers (Willow). ARGH! ARGH is right. Anybody who calls a pewee-type bird a Willow Flycatcher has still a lot to learn about flycatchers. Myself, although I know to distinguish between those, would *never* call a Willow Flycatcher unless by voice and in the proper nesting habitat. > >I KNOW I saw a Western Wood Pewee in the bushes. This was a positive ID. > >So, basically I've gotten myself all confused, comparing these birds >to one another, trying to get an idea of what I really saw and what it >all meant. > >Any comments? The bigger bird : must have been a pewee-type. Two choices in your area : Western Wood-Pewee and Olive-sided. Typically distinguished (a) by voice and (b) the funny white tufts that may be visible on the back. Failing that, the underside coloring : Olive-sided had very dark flanks, leaving a thin white line down the breast (the waistcoat effect). Wood-Pewee has smudgy dark breast and much less dark down the flanks, but this is very variable ; some pewees *may* have a white partitioning line down the breast. With experience, the birds are easy to tell apart by general impression, size, and shape, what the British like to call jizz. Olive-sided is a much stronger-looking bird, bigger head, bigger bill, shorter tail. Likes to be right in top of a tree, whereas the pewee uses a branch a bit below the top. The smaller bird will have been an empid, and that's about all that anyone could say about it. In your area, that means Hammond's, Willow, or Pacific-slope ("Western") Flycatcher. Dusky and Gray stay east of the Cascades. Read Ken Kaufmann's excellent book, "A Field Guide to Advanced Birding". He has much to say about empids. If it leaves you with the impression that empids are impossible to identify for ordinary mortals like you and me, I wouldn't blame you. Daan Sandee sandee@sun16.scri.fsu.edu Supercomputer Computations Research Institute Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052 (904) 644-7045
JAHAYES@MIAMIU.BITNET (09/01/90)
And a big "Ole`!" to the flame war.... But wrt a couple of book questions and the Daan Sandee response about west coast flycatchers, all mentioning the term "jizz". I had never run across this term before, guess that shows that I haven't done any birding on other continents (depending on where you think Panama is). Is this term an extraction from the German word "gestalt", as in Gestalt Psychology? I think as such that's a good description of the way some initially difficult birds become easier to i.d., because it just looks like one...(how do you know that's a Wood-Pewee? Well, it just looks like one). And, sigh, about the flame war. It probably makes no difference to me, as I think I'll have a new job in about a month and they have no net access :-(, but I guess I'd still say everybody just calm down. Indoor folks, put "indoor" in your title, although I must say any reasonably descriptive title ought to be sufficient; I mean, how many birders can't tell that an article about "food for my budgie" is of the indoor persuasion? Josh Hayes, Zoology Department, Miami University, Oxford OH 45056 voice: 513-529-1679 fax: 513-529-6900 jahayes@miamiu.bitnet, or jahayes@miamiu.acs.muohio.edu It goes in, it must come out. [Testicle's deviant to Fudd's first law of opposition.]