[ In case anyone wants to use it as an identification challenge, I have omitted the species in this email – will put it up later today]
After taking distant video of these birds bringing food in to what I assume was the nest site, I decided to check the images of the bird’s back against the field guides. I was not checking the identification (which I
knew) but thought I would check just how easy it would be to use the field guides if you did not know the bird and all you had was the attached view. While the poor quality image shows enough to identify the species if you know it, none of the field guides
had what I would consider a helpful representation of the back of the bird. Even the HANZAB illustrations, while closer in some ways, where still not particularly close. The species is very variable but some of the illustrations were so far off I think it
would be difficult or impossible to use them to identify the bird from a flying back view.
Steve
