wingwing

10/5/2014  PT

wgeoff

Apart from the second photo, I would have thought this was a good candidate for the Ryukyu Island subspecies owstoni.

Are you sure the second photograph is the same bird? It looks orange vs yellow is the other photos.

[ Last edited by wgeoff at 26/05/2014 06:04 ]

wingwing

Due to the bird flew away and came back in few minutes in several time so I cant realize that is the same bird or not.Also I attach
tow photo for reference

wgeoff

Thanks wingwing, I think it's the same bird, just a lighting issue.

I'll submit it for review by the Records Committee as a possible owstoni

ajohn

Geoff,
I'm interested in why you think this is owstoni. When I saw the pictures I assumed it was a first-summer male narcissina. It may just be my screen, but the upperparts look grey-brown rather than olive-green, the underparts do seem to have an orange tint (although I admit not as strong as typical narcissina) and the pattern of white on the wing looks typical for narcissina. I also thought the late date would favour narcissina.

Identification of first-summer males of these (sub)species is not straight-forward and the ID notes on the Birds Korea website highlight that owstoni is variable at this age. I wondered if there was some important ID features I might have missed on this bird.

wgeoff

I was looking particularly at the first and now the last photos above and comparing with the photo of owstoni on page 145 of the 2005-06 HKBR.
I agree, some of the other photos look rather different.

But it's not up to me to decide. I just collect records for the Records Committee to take the decision. As I said above, I'll just submit it as 'possible' - as you say, identification is not straightforward and it's sometimes as useful to have 'not accepted' on the record as it is to have 'accepted'.

[ Last edited by wgeoff at 28/05/2014 07:03 ]