Monday, February 28, 2011

Quiz #388 (2011-1-09) Solution


Click on picture(s) for a larger view.

Answer by Tony Leukering

This week's quiz bird's reddish-orange chest and sides and blue tail and wings with no suggestion of wing bars really leave us only two options. The trick is determining what in the picture allows us to separate male Eastern Bluebird from male Western Bluebird, as it is difficult, if not impossible, to do so via the tone of the blue color. As noted specifically in their responses by Thomas Hall and first-time respondent Julie Rouse, the trick is throat color: red in Eastern, blue or blue-gray in Western.

I took this picture of a male Western Bluebird on 22 March 2006 at Chatfield SP, Jefferson Co., CO.

Just a quick caution repeating previous cautions: Please separate thoughts on sex/age/subspecies/etc. from those of your species answer. Using this week's quiz as an example, should someone have submitted an answer of "Female Western Bluebird," I would have had no choice but to consider it incorrect, as it is a male. Should you wish to provide other such details, put those in parentheses or a separate sentence or... there are lots of ways that folks have done it. Thanks.

Incorrect species provided as answers:
Eastern Bluebird - 5
Bay-breasted Warbler - 1

Congratulations to the 23 of 29 getting the quiz correct:
Nick Komar
Christian Nunes
Pam Myers
Ben Coulter
Devich Farbotnik
Julie Rouse
Ira Sanders
Tammy Sanders
Christopher Hinkle
Margie Joy
Thomas Hall
Gary Koehn
Su Snyder
George Cresswell
Kyle Huffstater
Matt Bristol
Marcel Such
Robert McNab
Ali Iyoob
Al Guarente
Joel Such
Adrian Hinkle
Chishun Kwong

Answer: Western Bluebird