birding-aus

Strange Cuckoo-shrike

To: "'Birding-Aus'" <>
Subject: Strange Cuckoo-shrike
From: Stephen Murray <>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:21:46 +1000
Hello all.

 

This morning I was at Sheepstation Creek Conservation Park near Caboolture
in Queensland. Both White-bellied and Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes are common
here, and they are normally fairly easy to distinguish. One bird, however,
had me puzzled. At first I thought it was a regulation BFCS, but on closer
inspection it was more the size of a WBCS, has light half eye-ring (a
feature of WBCS), and, even though it has a darker area the shape of that of
a BFCS, if you look closely you can see a slightly darker facial mask area.
The bill looks too small for BFCS. Now, I realise there are dark morphs of
WBCS (which I've never seen), but I have only ever seen photos of birds with
a totally dark head. So, I have three questions:

 

1.       Do dark morph WBCS have gradations, or are they either all or
nothing?

2.       Do BFCS hybridise with WBCS?

3.       Have I been duped by a juvenile?

 

A rather ordinary photo  is here: http://www.pbase.com/image/150836159

 

Cheers Steve Murray

 

 

===============================

To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 

http://birding-aus.org
===============================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU