Quiz #476 (2012-4-08) Solution

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Solution by Tony Leukering

Excellent! No one stumbled over the hyphenation/non-hyphenation problem, the primary reason that I used this picture in the quiz. Two respondents figured out that reason and provided a bit of humor in their responses.

Peter Wilkinson: Why can't you just call it French Heron, and then we wouldn't have to worry about hyphenation and spelling and all that?!
Joshua Little: To dash or not to dash? Not to dash.

This week's quiz bird is a heron and the blue wings, brownish back, and white belly fooled no one into mis-stepping on the ID, at least among the respondents. I took this picture of a Tricolored Heron on 27 January 2010 at the Viera wetlands, Brevard Co., FL.

Incorrect species provided as answers:
none -- excellent!

Congratulations to the 21 of 21 getting the quiz correct:
Kirk Huffstater
Ben Coulter
Logan Kahle
Tyler Bell
George Cresswell
Su Snyder
Pam Myers
Margaret Smith
Gary Koehn
Peter Wilkinson
William von Herff
Donald Jones
Patty McKelvey
Margie Joy
Richard Jeffers
Joshua Little
Casey Ryan
Anji Trujillo
Joe Bens
Bryan Guarente
Nick Komar

Answer: Tricolored Heron

Quiz #475 (2012-4-07) Solution

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Solution by Tony Leukering

Ah, another tricky swallow/swift thing. The upperparts are unrelieved brown. While we cannot see much of the underparts at all, the throat is quite pale. First, we'll tackle the swift/swallow dichotomy. The wide-based wings with a fairly wide arm (part of wing from base to wrist) is wrong for swifts, particularly Chimney and Vaux's, which have very narrow-based wings and short arms.

Once we're among the swallows, we can quickly rule out all but the "brown" swallows: Northern Rough-winged, Tree, and Bank (this bird does not have the heft of a martin, such as Brown-chested). Unfortunately, we cannot see the tail shape well, but there's at least the suggestion of a notch or fork, though I'd be leery of depending upon that mark from this tricky view, so we'll keep Northern Rough-winged in the mix for now. The striking aspects of the bird to me are the very dark wings and the rump being the palest part of the upperparts plumage. Northern Rough-winged Swallow is typically unicolored -- or very nearly so -- above, particularly with brown flight feathers, not blackish ones. Tree Swallow shows an obvious indentation of whitish behind the wing on the flank that is lacking in our quiz bird. Other features supporting the ID as Bank Swallow include the very narrowly-pointed wings, narrow back end of the body, and pale fringes to the uppertail coverts. In my experience, from above, Bank Swallow's color is palest on the rump and gradually gets darker in all directions. I have another picture of this individual Bank Swallow on my Flickr site, which I took at Big Johnson Res., El Paso Co., CO, on 1 June 2011.

Incorrect species provided as answers:
Northern Rough-winged Swallow - 11
Chimney Swift - 3
Tree Swallow - 3
Purple Martin - 1

Congratulations to the 1 of 20 getting the quiz correct:
Joshua Little

Answer: Bank Swallow