Iberian Chiffchaff

I finally got round to twitching the long staying IBERIAN CHIFFCHAFF in Telford, late morning today; as already mentioned it showed brilliantly well in the sunshine, singing its head off, I managed to get some half decent pictures that I would be happy to get of a normal Chiffchaff never mind the specific Phyllosc I was aiming for in a wood full of Willow Warblers and Common Chiffchaffs - the loud and distinctive song clearly helped though!

The Telford Iberian Chiffchaff

 

Below is an Iberian Chiffchaff that we caught on Gibraltar in Feb 2013, we were identifying them in the hand on a variety of features including a wing length of >66mm with a long looking primary projection, weakly but still emarginated on the 6th primary, legs intermediate in colour between Common Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler with pale yellow soles, broad and obvious supercillium, often meeting above the bill and there was also something in the colour of the lower mandible but I forget!

This, I remember was a very bright and obvious individual, immediately obvious even metres away when walking up to it in the net but we caught several others that were much more subdued in colour, especially the yellow on the edges of the primaries.   The Telford bird is not as bright as this individual and the supercillium is not as broad but in the good light today it did have a pretty yellow chest (almost forming a pectoral band).