From south-bay-birds-bounces+south-bay-birds-archive=[[email protected]] Mon Oct 18 02:00:24 2004 Received: from www.plaidworks.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i9I8w8jh003724 for <[[email protected]]>; Mon, 18 Oct 2004 01:58:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sccrmhc13.comcast.net (sccrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.202.64]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i9I8u9VC003670 for <[[email protected]]>; Mon, 18 Oct 2004 01:56:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 204.127.205.145 ([204.127.205.145]) by comcast.net (sccrmhc13) with SMTP id <20041018085608016000hvqqe>; Mon, 18 Oct 2004 08:56:08 +0000 Received: from [67.169.121.5] by 204.127.205.145; Mon, 18 Oct 2004 08:56:07 +0000 From: [[email protected]] To: [[email protected]] Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 08:56:07 +0000 Message-Id: <[[email protected]]> X-Mailer: AT&T Message Center Version 1 (Sep 14 2004) X-Authenticated-Sender: bS5tLnJvZ2Vyc0Bjb21jYXN0Lm5ldA== MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5b1 Cc: [[email protected]] Subject: [SBB] interesting oriole at Great America X-BeenThere: [[email protected]] X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5b1 Precedence: list List-Id: South Bay Birding List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: south-bay-birds-bounces+south-bay-birds-archive=[[email protected]] Errors-To: south-bay-birds-bounces+south-bay-birds-archive=[[email protected]] All, On Saturday 10/16/04, Richard Jeffers saw a short-tailed female-plumaged oriole in the island of redwood trees in the parking lot across from the sycamores in which the Plumbeous Vireo has been seen at Great America. On Sunday 10/17/04, I visited this parking area once again in hopes of refinding this bird. I bumped into Richard and Al Eisner, who had been looking for the bird a bit further north in the flowering eucalyptus opposite the five-story Nortel Networks parking garage. After attracting some birds by pishing, I picked out the ORIOLE near the top of the eucalyptus tree. We observed the bird for several minutes at two different intervals, starting at 9:55am and 10:14am. Richard's Kowa TSN-820 series scope provided excellent detailed looks at the bird. The bird is clearly an immature/female Hooded/Orchard Oriole. It looks short-tailed (good for Orchard) but may be missing some of its central rectrices, giving a false impression of tail length (and making the tail appear notched in the middle). The bill seemed quite narrow, but was reasonably long - not so obviously short as to suggest Orchard Oriole, although there is much overlap in bill length between these species (according to Pyle 1997, exposed culmen length for OROR is 13.8-16.9mm, whereas that for HOOR is 14.9-20.4mm). At no time on either day was the bird heard to call ("wheet" for Hooded, "chuck" for Orchard). The overall coloration of the bird seemed good for OROR, being very olive green above and bright yellow below, lacking gray tones to the mantle or flanks. The bird was much smaller than a nearby Northern Mockingbird, notably larger than a Yellow-rumped Warbler, and slimmer and longer than, but about the same bulk as, a nearby House Finch. Sibley lists HOFI at 21 grams, OROR at 19g, and HOOR at 24g. We had good looks at the wing panel. The tertials were contrastingly blacker feathers with whiter edges and the longest primaries were also blacker with neat white tips. This molt pattern of recently acquired feathers indicates a hatching-year bird (figure 136A-B of Pyle 1997). We saw no signs of black feathering on the throat or chestnut feathering (if an Orchard Oriole) that would indicate a young male, but the timing of the acquisition of such feathers is variable and poorly known (Pyle 1997). The individual primary tips were clearly visible thanks to the white tips. The longest two primaries were not much different in length, followed by a reasonably large gap to the next three primaries, which appeared approximately equally and closely spaced. The most proximal of these feathers might have been concealed by the secondaries/tertials if it had not been drooped below them. Sibley notes that OROR have "more pointed wings", whereas HOOR have "more rounded wings". Pyle (1997) indicates that HOOR has "wing morphology short" with p9 < p5 by 3-9mm, whereas OROR has "wing morphology long" with p9 >= p5 by 0-6mm. However, p8 is longer than p9 for both species, so this distance to the ninth primary cannot be judged in the field. Jaramillo and Burke (1999, New World Blackbirds) give more wing tip detail. For Orchard Oriole p8 (8th primary feather) is the longest, with p9 being close to p6 in length, whereas for HOOR (at least the Texas race anyway) p7 is about equal to p6 and these are the longest feathers, with p9 being close to p4 in length. Since the relative sizes of the gaps between these feathers are not given, it is not clear which matches today's bird. The photos I have that show this mark suggest the bird is not inconsistent with HOOR, but I have been unable to find many pictures of OROR that show the wing tip well to see whether OROR looks notably different in this regard (certainly the above-noted differences suggest that it should). It seems probable that this bird is a hatching-year Hooded Oriole, but separating immature Hooded and Orchard Orioles can be quite difficult. Three birds initially identified as Hooded Orioles that wintered in San Francisco last winter were later reidentified as Orchard Orioles. If anyone sees this bird in the future it would be great if vocalizations were heard, or if signs of SY/adult male plumage started appearing. At least two WESTERN TANAGERS were also in this eucalyptus tree and the nearby trees. Mike Rogers _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. south-bay-birds mailing list ([[email protected]]) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://www.plaidworks.com/mailman/options/south-bay-birds/south-bay-birds-archive%40plaidworks.com This email sent to [[email protected]]