Yes. The female Cicadabird has basically fairly plain upperparts and wings (just buff edging to secondaries) and more basically brown than grey (or black &
white). The Varied Trillers have strongly patterned white (or buff) patterns on wings, and white eyebrow. So logic would suggest that if a bird on a video “looked identical” then it also was a Varied Triller and may be wrongly labelled or your looking is maybe
wrong. In checking this, I notice Knight’s picture in Pizzey’s book show the underside of imm Varied Trillers as streaked, HANZAB shows it as barred (as in this photo).
Philip
From: Mark Clayton [
Sent: Sunday, 31 March, 2019 9:19 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Bird ID
Lindsay,
Your bird is a male Varied Triller and appears to be moulting into adult (breeding) plumage or from juvenile to its first adult plumage.
Mark
On 31/03/2019 9:08 am, wrote:
I took the picture below at Cape Hillsborough (80km north of Mackay, Qld) a couple of years ago. I decided at the time that it was an immature Varied Triller. However, I was watching a video last night which included a bird that looked
identical and it was a female Cicadabird. Can anyone out there tell the difference? Which is my bird?
Regards
Lindsay
