FEBRUARY'S MYSTERY BIRD ANSWERS

From too difficult to too easy, or are we all getting the hang of this? ☺ There were 20 entrants again this month, all but one of which managing to correctly identify both of the mystery birds.

Mystery bird 9

The mystery bird was easily (and rightly) identified as a species of diver by all the entrants and it is testament to your identification skills that out of the 4 species (or 5, depending on your stance on the taxonomy of the recently occurring Pacific Diver!) found in UK waters, Red-throated and Black-throated (not forgetting Pacific) Divers were immediately eliminated by all. It is perhaps the bill which is most important in this photo and which quickly rules out the expected slimmer, more dagger shaped bill of Black-throated (and Pacific) Diver and the much slimmer, with a straighter culmen, bill of Red-throated Diver. This leaves us with the 2 largest species of diver, Great Northern and White-Billed (or Yellow-billed if you prefer, but not me, I'm 'old-school'!). The bill here is seen to be typically large and thick at it's base, with a quite marked upward angle on the goyns of the lower mandible (okay for both species) but in my eyes at least, a very slight curve to the culmen (top edge of the upper mandible). White-billed Diver would be expected to show a practically straight culmen and with this feature it seems we might be getting somewhere! The bill appears pale (but not exactly yellowish?) and has an apparently quite marked dark culmen and tip of the bill (although it would be right to consider the effects of shadowing etc at this point), something we would not expect to be as prominent on White-billed. The sides of the neck do indeed look pale, which would be good for White-billed but I fear this is an effect of the much darker shadowing around the face than an actual feature and piecing together other supplementary features such as the bill being held horizontally, the neck not appearing quite the same width as the head and the bill not appearing distinctively 'uptilted' in overall appearance, together with the important features of the bill already mentioned, we can come to the conclusion that this bird is a Great Northern Diver. All but 1 entrant managed to work it out, with White-billed being the other species offered (which was infact seriously considered by more than afew others!). A slightly better photo of the same bird appears below, giving us chance to confirm all the features noted.

Great Northern Diver (juvenile), Crosby Marina, Merseyside- Ian McKerchar

Mystery Bird 10

Again, 19 out of the 20 entrants managed to correctly identify this bird and in fairness it was only ever a 2 bunting race! The combination of the uniform head colouration, conspicuous pale eyering and submoustachial stripe, darker malar stripe and heavily streaked tawny-brown upperparts quickly leads us to either a male Ortolan or Cretzschmar's Bunting. The head colouration is clearly a greenish/grey and not the bluish/grey of Cretzschmar's and the upperparts, small area of underparts we can see and wing covert edges appear quite dull and not the deep bright rusty brown expected of the aforementioned species. This alone is enough to confidently and correctly identify this mystery bird as an adult male Ortolan Bunting. The same bird is pictured below (after it turned around!) along with a photo of an adult male Cretzschmar's Bunting for comparison.

Ortolan Bunting, Northern Cyprus- Ian McKerchar

Cretzschmar's Bunting, Northern Cyprus- Ian McKerchar

The following entrants correctly identified both species correctly, Rob and Sonia Adderley, Steve Atkins, Kane Brides, Dave Broome, Tony Coatsworth, Joan Disley, Dave Evans, John Frankland, Helen Garwood, Geoff Hargreaves, Nick Hilton, Andy Isherwood, Dean MacDonald, Tom McKinney, Steve Nelson, Nick Patel, Mark Payne, Peter Rolph, and Les Steele. There was no change in the leader board and Dave Broome and Tony Coatsworth now have 10 correct answers, but there's still time for one or both to make a mistake or two.

The mystery birds for the next round (March) can be found here.