Well at least Geoff and I agree on one thing. Great pictures, probably the best of a swiftlet taken in Hong Kong.
The observation that apparent rump colour on swiftlets depends on the light and the background at the time of observation has been made before. But if comparing like for like, especially over a series of photographs such as these, I think rump colour remains potentially useful. That said, photographs of undoubted Germain's on OBI show a much greyer rump than are displayed in museum specimens that I examined. What would be useful to know is the exact rump colour of the Germain's in Hainan, presumably the most likely source of vagrant Germain's in Hong Kong.
Whilst trawling through the OBI photographs of Germain's I came across a picture of a supposed Germain's from the Juishan Islands, Zhejiang, and following up on the reference came to this
http://birdingpage.blogspot.tw/2015/07/swiftlets-to-order.html . Interesting reading and note the author's reference to a white rump, although this isn't shown in the photograph. Food for thought, as is the possibility of swiftlets straying to Hong Kong from the Philippines. It has been 20 years since the swiftlet paper was written, and with that extra 20 years of knowledge and photographs, maybe it's time to look at the swiftlet situation again?
I'm attaching a couple of shots of a Himalayan Swiftlet taken in Long Valley on 12 April this year to allow comparison with the Po Toi individual. Does anyone else have decent shots of swiftlets from Hong Kong? If so please post in this thread.
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Last edited by hmartin at 17/10/2015 17:31 ]
