Early Blyth's Reed Warbler on North Ronaldsay

 

My second week on North Ronaldsay has given me the chance to do an ID notes post, which is what I mainly created this blog for... During my census on 12th August I got a call from George Gay saying he'd seen an interesting acro on the Links golf course. By the time I arrived it was sitting in front of him about 5m away at the base of a sand bank! 

Not your typical acro view!

After watching the bird over the following 15 minutes, we went through the birds features and decided it was either a Blyth's Reed or a Marsh. However, after a point it felt like we stopped taking in its features and were just watching it blankly in bemusement as it fed around our feet! It was almost like we'd been watching it for too long. At one point we had been pretty sure it was Blyth's but then managed to talk ourselves out of it since we thought its primary projection seemed a bit long at the time - possibly because of all the whacky shapes it kept pulling! 

The bird was throwing some odd shapes and the strong sunlight was making colours hard to assess... Interesting to see fresh pale tipped primaries here - presumably first year BRWs always look like this in early august?

Back at the obs we had another look through the photos and sent them off to get some other opinions. After a couple of hours, the consensus was that it was indeed a Blyth's after all. It suddenly seemed really obvious in all the photos, although I personally find this is always the case looking back in retrospect! Anyway, here's the features I've noted down....

Acros are hard to draw - I find capturing their facial expression especially tricky. This looked more like an Icterine Warbler until about 10 minutes ago so quite happy with how it ended up!

Being so fresh, the birds tertials appeared quite contrasty in certain light. However, this photo shows they were relatively plain under more reliable light conditions. The lack of rufous tones in the rump were helpful in eliminating Reed Warbler, along with the face pattern - relatively well defined + crisp supercilium, esp. in front of the eye.

This photo shows the chestnut wash to the wing feathers contrasting nicely with the cold greyish brown head and mantle - typical of Blyth's Reed. Underparts silvery-grey. Legs appear dark greyish pink.

Can't quite make out the wing formula on my photos, although George's pics show emarginations on the 3rd and 4th primaries which matches up nicely for BRW. This photo does neatly illustrate the last tertial falling short of the innermost secondary, which helps eliminate Marsh Warbler. The tertials appear more well defined in this photo, presumably as a result of the feathers being so fresh. Despite not being as obvious as some BRW photos I've seen, the primary projection is still relatively short (noticeably shorter than length of longest tertial - not sure whether this detail is necessarily a useful feature, just an observation).

Bird appears more warm-toned in this photo due to bright sunlight. Short primary projection more obvious here. Blunt-tipped bill in comparison to Reed Warbler's long spiky bill. Legs appear quite pale pink in the strong light.

Blyth's Reed Warbler demonstrating tiktok's next viral dance routine.

It did also banana a lot.