Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 18:46:15 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Paul Subject: Re: Hummingbird at the SI Comments: cc: "Tumer, Craig (home)" , "Janni, Ottavio" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I saw the hummingbird this morning (Sat.), along with Craig Tumer & Rob Hilton, and still have to leave it firmly in the "unidentified" category. I never got great looks at it, but did see it perching in the weeping willow for extended periods. At almost all angles (including a clear side-on shot) the primaries appeared to extend to or just shy of the tail tip - a feature that points towards Black-chinned. The only time this didn't hold true was when the bird was facing me (high in a tree), and I was looking at the primaries as they were held under the tail. From this angle they appeared to be noticeably shorter than the tail, but this could easily have been due to the angle. I was unable to see anything definitive on the shape of the outermost primary (as well as p6). From what I saw, it looked like it was missing the left outermost tail feather. I was able to see the right outermost tail feather, and it's shape appeared to be most like C in Figure 98 of Pyle. This is in the overlap range between R-T (AHY fem.) & B-C (Juv. fem.), though it wouldn't be if I could clearly determine the age, which I was unable to do. I would need to study this more. I'd also like to know how much weight one should put in this field mark. That is, is the variation within and across these two species too great to use it as a defining feature? The throat had a few dusky spots in it, but no sign of any irridescent feathering, which suggests, but is not definitive for juv. The times that I saw the bird feeding were too brief to make any note of tail pumping. For what it's worth, I didn't think the bill looked particularly long. Craig & Rob got better looks at the bird after I left, so they may have more to add. I went back later in the day with Craig & Rob, but we were unable to relocate the bird. Paul Pisano cheep@erols.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================