The Lincolnshire Bird Club

a large pale grey-brown falcon found on Read's Island on Sunday evening; showed better today but has never been really close 400m away at best and poor light but a series of better images from today on the blog

http://pewit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/lar ... on-id.html

any comments welcome --

Looks like a Saker. If an escapee, as Saker is no longer on schedule 4 they do not need to be ringed and registered with DEFRA if kept in captivity, which could account for no rings being seen. However a keeper should always be able to prove it's captive bred and this would normally involve a private or breeders ID ring.

Alan

Just a silly thought, but could it be a juvenile osprey? The dark stripe through the eye, and the blue-grey feet are indicative. The 10th image appears to be similar to my BWPi DVD of a juvenile.

Cheers

Geoff

This was a seriously big and powerful bird. When it flew you got a real impression of size. Nothing like i had seen before. Face was noticeably white. Body was much greyer than the illustration in Jonssons's Birds of Europe. Wings noticeably pointed in flight. Very impressive and happy and lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time

Looks like a Saker to me Graham, although there is a message on Twitter at present suggesting a Gyr. Notwithstanding the dangers of looking at photo's of birds I haven't seen, not sure why that conclusion has been reached. The possibility of any hybrid looking like a Saker may not be excluded, but it's a Saker for me (famous last words..). Any further thoughts ?

Phil

juv dark morph gyr or hybrid ??? strange one around about a year ago also ????

terry whalin

A tagged Saker will eventually make it across to the UK - check out some of the tracks here: 'Eonka' came close.... http://sakerlife2.mme.hu/en/content/bir ... llite-tags

_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecology
Manchester Metropolitan University

Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University

http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm
@Alexander_Lees

My thoughts too Alex. The Hungarian birds are clearly great wanderers and you would image that more eastern birds might move further but there seems to be a mind set amongst British committees that precludes acceptance of this species onto the Brit list; seem to recall a juv photographed on Fair Isle in October many years back that did not make it and cannot remember if there was actually a reason other than the general lots in captivity caveat.

I must admit I was baffled when I saw it had been put out as a Gyr as neil and I both thought it looked more like a Saker; in fact just had an email from a guy who thinks the same. I had hoped to have time to have put some thoughts together but seem to have been overtaken by events. 
I tried finding juv Saker photos on the net and they seem remarkably scarce even on Netfugl and FI and most pics on the web are of captive birds so their ancestry may not be well known anyway. I have only seen one badly in Israel and breeding birds in Hungary where they are all rather brown but the plates in Handbook of bird ID by dan zeterstrom show some distictly grey tinged birds and 3 races. I think the proportions of wing to tail, the shape of the head and neck and particularly the broad parrallel sided and square ended tail look better for Saker as well as the general underpart streaking getting denser and darker on the lower breast and flanks. It would be good to hear Dick's thoughts but I am guessing he is away or has given up on odd raptors!

Indeed, with the benefit of the doubt afforded to Bald Eagle, American Kestrel and now various ducks (e.g. Hooded Merg). Now that a pattern of long-distance vagrancy is established the door maybe open to acceptance, but you've got to prove its not a hybrid (or even a Gyr), before arguing why is not an escape. Worth seeing if it doesn't a shed a feather; DNA bar-coding would be a straightforward way to establish ID and if it is a 1w Saker and arrived in the UK this winter then there should be a strong isotopic signature between any feathers that it grew in eastern Europe and any new ones grown on the Atlantic fringe...

_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecology
Manchester Metropolitan University

Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University

http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm
@Alexander_Lees

Notwithstanding the points Alex raises about the spectre of hybridisation, I made my own modest contribution to Category D in 1995 (a late submission, hence appended to the 1998 report. BBRC got my middle initial wrong (should be "A") :

REPORT ON RARE BIRDS IN GREAT BRITAIN IN 1998
Saker Falcon Falco cherrug (0, 3, 0)
1995 Lincolnshire Kirkby-on-Bain, 22nd April (P. D. Hyde).
(Eastern Europe eastwards to Siberia, south to Iran; winters Southeast Europe, South Asia
from Turkey to China, East Africa)

This bird performed spectacularly at Kirkby pits for an hour, killing, but not eating, a BH Gull before heading off high east. There had been strong north-easterlies the day before, not that I'm suggesting anything ! I believe there is a falconer not to far away from Kirkby so I'm not expecting a result any time soon,

Phil

Ok things moving a little; I see Paul has rightly pointed out that tail pattern is wrong for Saker

Links to the photos of the Patrington bird are now on my blog and looks to me as if it must be the same bird when you compare the white spots on the tips of the lower scapulars; the early photos are much more contrasty and late afternoon and I think this may explain away the apparent different on colouration;

also check the birds on this link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyjovil/se ... 496574303/


lastly Mandy West has sent me a photo of a bird that she photographed heading west at Far Ings on Feb 16th which appears again to be the same bird so it may well have been int he local area for a long period and around Read's Island for 3-4 weeks; also reported back there this afternoon by C Heaton -- hopefully closer photos may produce some more discussion if it does hang around --

I will put Mandy's photo in the album (and shown below) -- note how much more like a Gyr it looks in one passing photo -- sometimes the more you get the worse the problem becomes!

Hhmmm....! Mandy's bird looks to have a darker head pattern., Is that due to different light conditions? It does look more Gyr-like in her photo. Can you get a tail feather for DNA analysis please Graham ?!
Phil

No problem Phil -- will wade and swim out to Read's Island and pluck one myself;
the artefacts of lighting in photography and also post processing and the way different cameras handle the same situations mean that in theory the camera does lie or at least differ -- fiddling with exposure can make a lot of difference; I think the chances of there being two different but somewhat similar looking birds in the middle Humber at the same time are rather too remote to be likely

get swimming graham, get that tail feather, juv dark morph gyr even more convinced from mandys photo, looks very much like the one I had in the very north of Canada a good few years ago, you will not get an exactness of plumage they are like buteos highly variable I think this dark morph phase is more common from the west of Greenland and north America and they do shift a long way, look at the north American polar weather, do not rule it out. its a big bruiser of a bird, heavy structure the wings are different looking shape wise, can look like a female gos in wing structure ie width to length ratio with a secondary bulge because its a heavy bruiser wow !!!! or a hybrid lol !!! good luck, get the cossie on.

terry whalin

Plenty of phone calls asking what everyone was looking for today but no reports either way anywhere? Presumably someone knows if anything was seen today.