Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 11:24:09 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Paul O'Brien Subject: Re: Gray-cheeked vs. Bicknell's? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joel, Your thrush sounds like a certain Gray-cheeked. The size is a good indicator as Bicknell's is decidedly small and always shows warm colors, whereas your bird was flat gray. Forget the bill color; it's too variable. A good indicator, if you can see it, is the primary extension beyond the tertials. In Bicknell's it is generally noticeably less than the extension of the tertials beyond the feathers of the back. As usual, only extremes are useful and other features should be present to back up this one, such as chestnut edges at the base of the primaries, warm coloration, especially in the tail (beware as the minimus subspecies of Gray-cheeked shows this too), and a buffy wash in the throat, like that of a Swainson's. You would want the whole galaxy of plumage features to fall in line before declaring a Bicknell's. I had one at my feeder in Sept. of 2000 that had all the above details but it caught my attention because it gave its flight note, which differs subtly from Gray-cheeked. Listen to the sounds on the web site someone else posted (sorry, I neglected to take note of the name). Also, look for the release of the CD by Bill Evans and Michael O'Brien (I have no financial stake) later this year on flight notes of nocturnal migrants. For plumage details see the excellent article by Dan Lane and Al Jaramillo in Birding, Vol.32, No.4, Aug. 2000, pages 318-331. And good luck with Bicknell's. For now, I would restore Gray-cheeked to your list. Paul O'Brien Rockville, Mont. Co., MD pobrien776@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================