JULY 2008'S MYSTERY BIRD ANSWERS

There were 26 entrants to this months competition and it was the first month in a good while that everyone managed to identify atleast one of the mystery duo correctly, so congratulations all round. But what were they and which did you get right?

Mystery Bird 13

Mystery bird number 13 was it seems, actually not much of a mystery at all but to be fair, given the apparent obvious features of this bird it seemed a foregone conclusion that it might just get correctly identified by all entrants, which in fact it did! Grey upperparts (and head from what little we can see of it) combined with a distinctly bright yellowish/green rump, tail with black central feathers and startlingly white outers and black tertials white edges all gave away the bird's identity as a Grey Wagtail. This bird infact was present in Manchester City Centre (one entrant even managed to identify the correct building!) and was fond of attacking itself in the windows of surrounding buildings, not an uncommon display for that species and the image below proves the point beyond all doubt!  

Above: Grey Wagtail, Manchester City Centre, June 2008 (Adrian Dancy)

Mystery Bird 14

Bottoms up! The seemingly apparent run of mystery birds bottoms continues with this our 14th of the year and in fairness it caused a fair amount of confusion amongst the ranks too. Five species were voted for, 5 waders and 1 gull and all had atleast some potential to fit our mystery bird but only one could be right, or could it? Anyway, that gull, the apparent odd one out, but look again and juvenile Black-headed Gull (1 vote) does infact show some of the characteristics we can see here and it's not too difficult to see where that entrant was coming from but a closer look at the image shows the legs to be orange rather than the gull's pink one's, the mantle is too uniform in colour whereas the gulls would show more pale feather edging and grey 'patches' and the seemingly black area under the throat or on the breast of our mystery bird would be lacking in a juvenile Black-headed Gull too. So what about the waders? Ruff, Little Ringed Plover, Ringed Plover, Pectoral Sandpiper and Turnstone where all suggested as fitting the bill (I know, but we can't see the bill ☺) but I think Turnstone (5 votes) can be fairly easily discounted on the basis of that species showing either much bright rufous on the upperparts (in breeding adult plumage) or being much darker brownish/black (in non-breeding adult or juvenile plumage) neither or which is evident here and Pectoral Sandpiper lacks the bright orange legs, such a solidly dark chest band and the uniform upperparts, so two down, three to go! Little Ringed Plover (1 vote) could have been a possibility but the mystery bird's clearly bright orange legs and overall rather bulky and very 'fully round' rear on appearance quickly assist us in eliminating it too and now we are down to just two. Ruff received 5 votes and Ringed Plover 13 but both appear totally different in the field and illustrate just how difficult it can be to judge jizz from photographs sometimes! Both species have orangey legs and as most of our bird's legs are under water it is practically impossible to judge their length but what of that black on the throat/breast area we can see on the image? If the bird were indeed a Ruff then markings such as those would indicate a male bird in breeding plumage and if that were true then one would expect to see more black feathering extending down along the flanks and onto the top of the belly, even in moulting birds but they are not apparent here, all seems rather restricted. In that same plumage Ruff would also show black barring internally on the brown upperparts which I would wholly expect to be visible here and clearly this bird's upperparts appear a uniform and rather 'flat' dullish sandy-brown and if only by a process of elimination we have arrived at out correct answer, that the bird is a Ringed Plover. Or have we? Not surprisingly, only two entrants suggested Semipalmated Plover (but still went of the correct answer of course), the American counterpart of our very own Ringed Plover and as such a startlingly rare bird in the UK I didn't really expect anyone to, but could it be identified from Ringed Plover from this image? In short, no and if you'd have suggested it as your answer I'd have given you the point anyway ☺

Above: Ringed Plover, Astley Moss East Pools, June 2008 (Ian McKerchar)

Those entrants managing to correctly guess, of course, I mean identify, both species correctly were John Frankland, Paul Cliff, John Tymon, Simon Johnson, Mark Rigby, Simon Warford, Craig Higson (optics safe then Craig ☺), Helen Garwood, Peter Rolph, Melanie Beckford, Michel Rogg, Mike Chorley, John Raynor non of which had any effect on the top of the leader board as Simon Johnson continues his uninterrupted reign. Next month's another story though, so keep in there!