ID please

[Andre van As]

<!--StartFragment-->Can you help me with the ID of this bird. I thought it was a Rail but when I looked in Ted Floyds book I could not match it exactly.
Exif: H3DII; 300mm; ISO 200; 1/160; f 11; Light meter - center weight; NJ shore Oct 2012; handheld; PP PS and Topaz.


130804





I also have another I am trying to ID – it comes to my suet feeder occasionally. It is very timid and I cannot get it to sit still for a portrait.



About the same size as a cardinal
Blue/grey head
Red beak
Breast and tail plumage almost the same color as a male cardinal
Wing and back plumage darkish to brownish and there is a tuft of feathers sticking up between the wings on the back



I am guessing that this is some sort of hybrid breed – perhaps a cardinal+cow bird. Do think this happens occasionally in nature?


Kind regards

Andre<!--EndFragment-->

[P-A. Fortin]

Looks like a juvenile yellow crowned night heron.

[Andre van As]

Thanks P-A
I looked at a juvie in Floyd's book and it looks as though it has yellow legs.

Regards

Andre

[Richard Unsworth]

Looks like BCNHeron to me.

[Ian Cassell]

I was going to say Juvenile BCNH, but my images of them all have yellow legs. Aside from that, it looks like one. I'm pretty sure it's a juvi heron, just now not sure which one.

[Andre van As]

Hi Ian
I checked out your extensive collection of herons on Smugmug and all of the juvi's had yellow or light colored legs.

Thanks

Andre

[Richard Unsworth]

99.9999% sure its a YELLOW Crowned Night Heron
sorry for the earlier mis ID.
Heres one from Pearl Islands, Panama. Its mum was feeding on crabs not far away!

[Andre van As]

Hi Richard
Thanks for the comparison image you sent. As you say it probably is a yellow CNH as the rest of the bird apart from the leg color is almost identical.
Your suggestion that the color in my image is way off:bg3: prompted me to go back to my RAW file and check the original. The color of the original is exactly like the my final output. In my PP all I did was sharpen and de-noise as well as a mild crop. On our trip to the Jersey shore my wife and I spent a lot of time birding and saw this fellow on the same perch every day for a week or more. At that time I tried to ID him and noticed this leg color variation. This is why I turned to my BPN colleagues to opine. So in my last 50 years of game watching etc mainly in Africa I quite frequently come across intra-species color variations not accounted for by age. This occurred in both mammals and reptiles. I thought we had found a snake species way out of its boundary in Namibia but on closer examination it was a local but had a color variation. I worked with a colleague and helped him collect bone marrow specimens from a number of mammals in the KNP and he found, to our surprise that several Impala that we collected marrow from had in separate individuals 57, 58 and 59 chromosomes. After this finding we tried to see if we could observe any phenotypic variations that may accompany such a significant genotypic difference and were not able to notice any variations. The question that arose out of this genetic variation was how did cross random breeding that occurs in the wild express the genetic pattern. So what does the calf of 57 chromosome ram mating with a 59 chromosome ewe look like genetically and phenotypically? We were unable to raise the funding to do the experiment.

So Richard this is my way of telling you that the color is actually spot on. Perhaps we are dealing with a real mild variant and not a PS PP mess up.

Kind regards

Andre

[Richard Unsworth]

Interesting; out in the big world of nature many variants exist and add to that "information" from the field and one often finds differences between what one sees and the text books.You will note, having look at my images of YCNH's I had removed the color comment though light can cause some funny tricks and yes this may well show a variant.
Interestingly I spent 15 years in Zambia observing game/birds and many do not/did not match the specs for the species.
Im in Portugal now and see many white - black birds :-)

[Andre van As]

BTW Richard - I looked at your heron again and it almost looks like a 3D image - the sharpness of focus really makes it pop out.

Andre

[Richard Unsworth]

The images I have of the juveniles were taken on Contadora Island, Pearl Islands, Panama, actually just outside the late Christian Diors house!
I am about to start reprocessing images fro Panama, in those days I hadnt the PP skills :-)

[Paul Guris]

I agree with the ID as Yellow-crowned due to head and bill shape and the small white spots (expected to be larger and a little more extensive on Black-crowned).

I'd also like to comment on leg color, or any soft part color for that matter. These features can be highly variable in some species, and no book will document every variation possible. For example, most (all?) of the books show Herring Gulls here in America as having pink legs, and most of the time that's true. But in the spring when hormones are running high, it's not unusual to see some with legs that are varying mixes of vibrant yellow, orange, and hot pink tones. This has caused some people to try to ID some of the yellower legged birds as Yellow-legged Gull, a very rare visitor on this side of the pond. Other things to keep in mind when it comes to leg color include poop, mud, and salt. Any of these dried on the legs can change the color drastically.

By all means that doesn't mean that soft part color is useless, but it can be variable. It's why you should always try to ID birds using multiple identification criteria instead of relying on just one.