Hello, Birders. Thanks to Brandon Percival for posting photos of an interesting wood-pewee found on May 21st in Fremont County. Check out this photo of the bird:
http://tinyurl.com/3cl3gvx If I had *only* that one photo to go on, I'd sure be tempted to call it an Eastern Wood-Pewee. Field marks that are good for Eastern Wood-Pewee are: (1) the completely orange lower mandible; (2) the overall bright/pale tones of the bird; (3) pretty good contrast on both of the pale/bright wing bars relative to the rest of the wing; and (4) the bird's down-cocked tail angle (a minor supporting character). Of course, there's more to it than just that one photo. For starters, Brandon posted other photos, some of them showing a dusky, "vested" breast; and that's more typical of Western Wood-Pewee. And of course there's the matter of the bird's location: Needless to say, Western Wood-Pewee is more expected in Fremont County. A few years ago in Birding magazine, Cin-Ty Lee, Andrew Birch, and Ted Eubanks had an article on wood-pewee identification. Here's a link to a free PDF download of that article: http://aba.org/birding/v40n5p34.pdf Also, I've posted an online mini-article, "How difficult, really, are the wood-pewees?" Here's a link to that: http://tinyurl.com/3n5ndzy And here's something that's of particular relevance to this Fremont County bird: an online analysis of a wood-pewee from the Bering Sea Region of Alaska, where either species of wood-pewee would be unexpected. Although this Alaskan wood-pewee showed various characters for Eastern Wood-Pewee (for example, a largely orange lower mandible and the color and pattern of the wing bars), there was good reason, or so I thought, to call it a Western Wood-Pewee. Here's a link to analysis of that Alaskan bird: http://tinyurl.com/3f2es3l One final thought. We're in the month of May. That means wood-pewees in Colorado are pretty worn out right now. That's because they are wearing feathers that were molted in early last fall. Interspecific variation in, say, the extent of the "vest" or the pattern of the wing bars is pretty much wiped out, by late spring, by the effects of feather wear. So I'll agree with Brandon and with Steve Mlodinow that this bird is unidentifiable; but I do wonder if it might have been an Eastern! ------------------------------- Ted Floyd Editor, Birding Blog: http://tinyurl.com/4n6qswt Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/2ejzlzv Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/2wkvwxs ------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en.
