Looks ok for tristis, doesn't it. Its a nice shade of grey-brown, with green restricted to the wings and tail. That's all well and good, but now listen to it...
It's not the 'classic' tristis peep. It sounds a lot more like a collybita. I wonder, what do grey abietinus sound like? Do they exist? And if they do exist, would they look and sound like this?
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Surfbirds forum of a similar bird from Sweden. The video shows a grey tristis type chiffchaff calling like a collybita. The thread can be found here.
Dear Steve,
ReplyDeleteI am preparing a paper on Siberian Chiffchaff and (“Siberian type”) for the French journal Ornithos. I saw your superb photographs on your blog and I wonder if you could be so kind to accept that I possibly publish the first one from you post http://steveblain.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/iffy-chiffy.html in my paper. If so, could you please send me a high resolution for publication. It is very interesting since the bird looks like a tristis but the call is a collybita-type one.
Your contribution will be acknowledged indeed.
Thank you so much for your help in advance.
Best regards
Philippe J. Dubois
pjdubois@orange.fr