HFCheung 3/02/2017 13:03
Helps on ID of a bird in Yunnan
This photo of a bird was taken in Baifaling (SW Yunnan) on roughly 2017-1-8. It resembles a Sibia but does not appear to fit any Sibia in China. Comments on its ID are welcome. This is the only photo of this bird. No more angles are available.
[attach]28815[/attach]
Photo by nicks
[[i] Last edited by HFCheung at 3/02/2017 13:05 [/i]]
lrichard 3/02/2017 18:55
Great record! And a lovely bird, as are all the Sibias.
Surely the people who make up bird names for Asian bird lists can come up with something more memorable than "Dark-backed" Sibia for a bird like this.
kmatthew 3/02/2017 23:37
Surely it's a Beautiful Sibia with shadow across the forehead and back?
thebirdguy 4/02/2017 11:50
In a dark-backed sibia the black seems to cover almost all of the face, and it looks a bit like beautiful sibia too.
ajohn 5/02/2017 11:22
For me, Dark-backed should be much darker above, with a different head pattern (darker crown uniform with cheeks). Also the wing pattern (pale fringes to primaries) and tail pattern look wrong for Dark-backed.
Most aspects of this bird look closest to Beautiful for me. The only real problem I think is the apparent paleness of the underparts. As Matthew suggests, that may be related to the lighting on the photo. A few online photos show Beautiful also appearing to have pale underparts, e.g.:
[url]http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?Bird_Image_ID=23004&Bird_ID=1482&Bird_Family_ID=&Location=[/url]
[url]http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?Bird_Image_ID=83616&Bird_ID=1482&Bird_Family_ID=&Location=[/url]
HFCheung 11/02/2017 16:36
Thanks for comments.
To me, it does not fit Beautiful Sibia well. May be it is a new subspecies or even a new species.
Will keep our eyes open.