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It doesn't look like a Black-browed Reed Warbler. It doesn't look like a
reed warbler at all. It has a long forked tail, short undertail coverts,
and pale upperparts. Black-browed is a Moustached Warbler-like bird with
a short, broadly rounded tail, short wings, and dark legs. While it does
have a prominent pale supercilium, it has an otherwise quite plain face,
and does not have anywhere near as prominent a dark eyeline as this bird
seems to show. Its upperparts are also a richer brown, contrasting quite
strongly with its pale underparts.
I have no explanation for the black stripe on the head, but otherwise
this looks like a Sykes's Warbler (or perhaps Booted, not sure). You can
see the difference in the colour of the paler tarsi and darker feet. I'm
puzzled that the black extends with uniform intensity from the crown to
the tip of the beak. That coupled with the odd colour in other places
(e.g. the purple on the branches) makes me wonder…
Maybe the only way to solve this mystery is to look at the luminance
histogram. ;-)
-- ams
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I've attached two modified versions of the photograph.
2p-stretched.jpg is the original photograph lightened by moving the
midpoint as far left as it would go in the histogram. Note that the
weird purple colour corresponds exactly to the weird crown stripe.
Next, 2p-darkened.jpg is the same photo darkened by moving the midpoint
right until the leaves and branches looked a more plausible colour. That
makes the bird look much less weird too.
So I conjecture that this photograph was taken in poor light and made
brighter in post-processing, which exaggerated chromatic aberrations due
to noise in dark areas.
-- ams
Argh. Now attached.
-- ams
No, not Blyth's Reed, which has much longer undertail coverts.
-- ams
-- ams
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It can't be both moulting *and* longer, and it's clearly longer. Not
just that, but you can see the end of a very pointed wingtip, which is
inconsistent with the Black-browed Reed Warblers I spent a lot of time
observing in Kolkata last week. The angle is bad, but still.
> I think the undertail coverts are rather longer and fluffy in Sykes's
> which resembles the Blyth's Reed Warbler with very long undertail
> coverts.
No, Sykes's has distinctly shorter undertail coverts in proportion
compared to Blyth's.
> We are so inconsiderate, blaming it all on the light. :p
There are other reasons to doubt Black-browed Reed Warbler. Unlike
Blyth's, Black-browed is a reed-bed specialist. It's a short-winged
bird, unlikely to fly long distances. And Rajasthan is more than a
thousand kilometres further west of its known range, and I know of
no records (credible or otherwise) in between.
-- ams
P.S. I wonder if Sykes ever met Blyth. :-)
We are so inconsiderate, blaming it all on the light. :pRegards,Saurabh
:)