HFCheung

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.

mmexport1485664254539.jpg (45.69 KB)

3/02/2017 13:03

Photo by nicks

[ Last edited by HFCheung at 3/02/2017 13:05 ]

fai584

Dark-backed Sibia

fai584

A new record of China

lrichard

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

Surely it's a Beautiful Sibia with shadow across the forehead and back?

thebirdguy

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

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.:
http://orientalbirdimages.org/se ... y_ID=&Location=
http://orientalbirdimages.org/se ... y_ID=&Location=

HFCheung

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.