Well, I for one am not sure that everyone
really does want to know about this but here goes.
I have magnified below sections of 3 pics
Julian sent me of his bird. I am sure the resulting file is not of a size
that will offend anyone because I took the precaution of sending it to myself,
where it came through at 22kb, and then onforwarding it. It is
quite clear that the bird is a Buff-rumped Thornbill, for the following
reasons.
Unfortunately the tail area in Fig 3 is
blurred by reason of movement, unlike the rest of the picture. However I
have intensified the colour. It is quite clear that the ‘rump’
and the undertail coverts have the buff or cinnamon (or perhaps garam masala) colour
of the BRT. There is no trace of the lemon-yellow of the YRT. The
pale rump in Fig 1 is a very very pale colour (certainly indicating either a BRT
or a YRT) but that feature is difficult to use as the colour has been washed
out by over-exposure in the strong light, a common occurrence with the harsh
Australian sun that sometimes makes it difficult to align colours in
photographs with those in a field guide.
More compelling is the head shot in Fig 2.
This shows the relatively bland brownish head of the Buffy with none of the strong
characters to be associated with the YRT, which I shall not bore any unlikely readers
thus far by enumerating. To my eye, Buffies can be picked sometimes even
at a distance in good light because they seem to have little helmets of a uniform
mid-brown rather the shape of the coal-scuttle helmets worn by the German
infantry in WW2, or perhaps one of those bathing caps that has a flap to cover
the ears.
From: Geoffrey Dabb [
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 3:55
PM
To: Geoffrey
Dabb
Subject:
