Subject: "Birding" Quiz bird C
Date: Jun 3 22:49:58 2004
From: Jack Stephens - jstephens62 at comcast.net


My attempt to identify the three birds in "Birding" magazine's photo quiz:
Looking at Quiz bird "C", it is clearly a phalarope. And it clearly has red
on the neck. So it must be a Red-necked Phalarope. Who says this has to be
hard?

Ted Floyd says, that's who (Ted is the editor of Birding).

Looking at field guides to confirm my off-the-cuff ID, it is hard to find a
bird that matches the quiz bird. In Sibley's, the male Red-necked Phalarope
has a very fine supercilium, nothing like the bold white supercilium in the
photo. It turns out that male Wilson's look something like male
Red-necked's. Wilson's have the bold supercilium, but in Sibley's they have
just a wash of rust on the neck, not the fairly intense rusty red patch on
the quiz bird. Wilson's is quite a bit paler on the upper parts than
Red-necked, but we can't see the upper surface of the wings or back from the
photo. The Nat Geo book shows a much more prominant patch of red on the male
Wilson's than Sibley's, but Nat Geo has been faulted for being too bright
with it's colors. That rendition may not be reliable enough to hang your hat
on. Petersons is somewhere in between, showing more color on the male
Wilson's than Sibley's, but less than Nat Geo.
In situations like these, I like to turn to photo guides to see what they
have to offer. Paulson's book has a nice shot of male and female Wilson's,
and the males neck patch of red is fairly subtle; close to Sibley's and not
like the quiz bird. He also has a shot of Red-necked; the neck color is
right but the supercilium is way to thin. Kaufman's male Wilson's also shows
very pale rust on the neck, but the Birds of North America CD-ROM has a
photo of a male Wilson's that is pretty close to the quiz bird.
Maybe I am putting too much weight on plumage. Aren't you supposed to be
able to tell phalaropes just by the bill? Wilson's is very thin and long,
Red-necked not as thin and shorter, Red phalarope shorter and relativley
thick. Well I'm sorry, but I look at this bird and I am just not sure from
the bill alone. The only thing I can tell from the bill is that it isn't a
Red Phalarope. I look in the book and it seems easy. I look at the quiz bird
and I am just not sure. I even went so far as to measure bill length in
relation to head size in all the field guides. Wilson's has a bill equal or
greater than head length, Red-necked equal to head length and shorter, the
quiz bird's bill is about equal to head length. Go figure.
What it comes down to is this: male Wilson's and Red-necked Palaropes look
somewhat similar. The red on the neck of the male Wilson's is often pale,
but can be variable. The supercilium on the Red-necked seems not to be
variable, and clearly does not fit with the quiz bird. In addition, male
Red-necked has dark on the breast not seen in the quiz bird. And since we
have such a good look at the under surface of the wings, I used Dennis
Paulson's on-line photos of bird wings as a reference
(http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/wingphotos.html) The Wilson's shows nice
bars on the underwing primary coverts, well seen on the quiz bird, that I do
not see on the Red-necked wing. For all these reasons, I call Quiz bird C a
male Wilson's Phalarope.
As usual, comments, corrections or other ideas welcome.

Cheers,

Jack Stephens
Edmonds, WA
jstephens62 at comcast.net