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Yes.
Dependant on the view available of course, I think a juvenile Sacred Kingfisher
is obvious from the mottled wings and upperparts, apart from any buff
underparts. Tracking a lot of known age and sex birds should help sort out
whether it is an age, sex, wear of plumage or individual difference feature.
Azure Kingfishers are quite different and are not like an over coloured Sacred
Kingfisher. Apart from shape and colour, the head pattern, and neck collar
(or not) is also quite different. In other words something shaped like
a Sacred Kingfisher but much more coloured than the book typical Sacred
Kingfisher is still that, not an Azure Kingfisher. Another clue is calls. Sacred
Kingfishers are very noisy at their nesting sites.
Philip
I happened to be looking through an old CBN (March 1990, p18)
where there was a note on Sacred Kingfishers referring to the ‘considerable
amount of rufous that young birds have on their breasts’. It went on ‘this
rufous colouration is not well shown in the field guides and can easily result
in identification of juvenile Sacred Kingfishers as Azure Kingfishers’.
The 1989 rev of Slater (text and illustration) gives the MALE with pale buff
underparts and the FEMALE as ‘less buff below, some almost white’.
Since vol 4 of HANZAB (1999) it is more widely accepted that the ‘buff’
(to call it that for convenience rather than accuracy) is not particularly a juv
or female character but related to moult – ‘when plumage fresh, birds can look
very buff below’. ‘Individual variation’ is also a consideration.
The below old photo shows a recently fledged juv –
Don’t bring up Restless Flycatchers. There is a
respectable view (for the present) that the rusty colour is usually but
not always a female characteristic.
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