{"id":5887,"date":"2013-06-22T17:10:29","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T17:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/?p=5887"},"modified":"2014-01-12T21:34:12","modified_gmt":"2014-01-12T21:34:12","slug":"when-is-an-icky-not-an-icky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/when-is-an-icky-not-an-icky\/","title":{"rendered":"When is an Icky not an Icky?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOn Friday 21st June 2013, the news of an Icterine Warbler in Notts was released over the Bird Information Services<\/span><\/strong>. Any Hippolais <\/em>warbler inland is a good bird. As it was also a Midlands tick, I decided to go look at it. The bird had been discovered on Thursday 20th but the news was only released on Friday 21st. The bird was singing from a conifer plantation, close to a small village called Tiln, near Retford in North East Nottinghamshire. The local news was that apparently the bird had responded to tape of Icterine Warbler and showed a pale wing panel. Upon arrival a number of departing birders made comment to us on how difficult it had been to see it well. Some stated that they had only brief views during 3 hours of observation but the bird had been singing on and off.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWe arrived on site around 6pm after a dreadful journey through Friday afternoon traffic on the M1. A number of local birders were on site and gave us the "low-down". Suddenly after a few minutes the bird began to sing and was located on the tip of a small distant conifer. Through binoculars the bird appeared to have a pale wing panel and had yellowish underparts. At the range the bird was showing, I could not see any obvious wing formula. I fired off a few record shots, luckily before the bird disappeared. I had never heard Icterine Warbler song before, so this was a new experience for me. There seemed to be a lot of mimickery in the song but it wasn't as loud as I had expected, rather grating and scratchy and not too disimilar to Olivaceous Warbler. All seemed OK on the brief but reasonable views that I had. We stayed for about another 45 minutes and during that time I only heard the bird and never saw it again. Around 7pm we left for the journey home.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAt 11pm I received a text message to say that the "Icky" was in fact a Melodious Warbler. Photos had been posted on a couple of internet sites, which showed the primary projection to be extremely short, too short in fact for Icterine Warbler. \n<\/p>\n

\n\tSo there lies a learning curve<\/strong> – When viewing a species that is tricky to identify (such as Icterine v Melodious) – \n<\/p>\n

\n\t1) Make sure you get good views and make up your own mind on the identification; \n<\/p>\n

\n\t2) Never automatically assume that someone else has got the ID right; \n<\/p>\n

\n\t3) Ensure you are familiar with the birds key ID features and the birds song;  \n<\/p>\n

\n\t4) Take a good look at your photos and check on the salient features of the bird –\n<\/p>\n

\n\tHad I done this last night, I may have noticed the short primaries a lot sooner than I did – after the event!! Oddly enough, Melodious Warbler is probably the better of the two birds and I dare say a new species for Nottinghamshire. Year list moves on to 199<\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\"Melodious-Warbler51762867\"\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\"Melodious-Warbler51722866\"\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\"Melodious-Warbler51702865\"\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAbove three images – Melodious Warbler<\/strong> – Tiln, near Retford, Nottinghamshire – Tony Davison©<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tNote<\/strong> – The appearance of a pale wing panel; The short primary projection, (between half & two thirds of the tertial length) showing the <\/span>primaries to be evenly spaced (on Icterine they get progressively wider apart towards the wing tip) this feature was not easy to see in the field<\/strong><\/span>; The leg colour, more browny-grey than blue-grey of Icterine; The emarginations appear to fall just inside the tertial tip. This wing pattern gives the effect of a longer appearance to the tail and seems to be the deciding factor on the birds ID. As far as the song is concerned, I'll take a rain check on that one!! I really need more experience of the song of both species. Just goes to show the power of photography in our modern birding.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday 21st June 2013, the news of an Icterine Warbler in Notts was released over the Bird Information Services. Any Hippolais warbler inland is a good bird. As it was also a Midlands tick, I decided to go look at it. The bird had been discovered on Thursday 20th but the news was only released on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,18,529,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-203","category-birds","category-birdsof2013","category-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}