Date: 8/28/12 5:48 pm
From: <jovet...>
Subject: [MDBirding] Goldfinch with no wingbars


Tonight there was what appeared to be an adult male American Goldfinch at Governor's Bridge Road, PG county.

That's not remarkable. I took a quick look and passed on to looking at other things flitting around. Jon called my attention back to the bird, saying something just wasn't right. And it wasn't. The bird looked very much like any other normal American Goldfinch, but had no wingbars at all. The wings were a velvety looking black, and solid. He had the standard black Goldfinch cap, bright yellow coloration, and a finch-shaped bill.

I've been trying to find anything that would explain this - and can't so far.

Can anyone enlighten me? Is this a phase of molting, an aberration of plumage, or could it be a different species (I doubt the latter)?

Other than that odd finch, we ran into several small flocks of migrants. We found northern parula, blue winged warbler, least flycatcher, pine warbler, many blue-gray gnatcatchers, and an ovenbird, among more common birds. We also had several birds that we just couldn't ID - very tantalizing, but also very frustrating.

At one point, two small flycatchers were having a spat mid-air, and nearly ran into us at very high speed. We stopped in our tracks, and then noticed that there were gnatcatchers, flycatchers, warblers and who-knows-what in abundance in the surrounding trees and bushes. I'm not sure when I've been so very surrounded by bird activity. Nor such extremely active birds. There were plenty of nice birds - but it was very hard to catch more than a fleeting glimpse of most of them. I mostly ended up confused, seeing a bit of bird there, a bit here, and not enough to call a whole bird much of anywhere. I'm guessing that means several of them were probably life birds for me - since I wasn't familiar enough to recognize them.

As I set out this evening, I was hoping for a lot of good warblers. And I got my wish. I just forgot to wish that a real birder would show up along with the flock. A real birder did show up - we ran into Rob Ostrowski - but just a few minutes to late to help us sort out the flock.

Joanne

Joanne Howl, DVM
<jovet...>
West River, MD

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