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Halcyon leucocephala
This was sent to birdforum.org and their ID was Brown-hooded, which is the last suggestion made. As the user said, it was with a Brown-hooded male. You will also note that Kei Heyns suggested Brown-hooded after he first suggested Grey-headed. The first two suggestions are left in place to show the history of the ID process. Brown-hooded was confirmed by 2 independent experts who are not members of Project Noah and therefore could not partake in the suggestion process.
Aakash, the ID of some birds can be a bit difficult when it comes to subspecies, we can rule out Woodland Kingfisher (Halcyon senegalensis) because it lacks the black on the lower beak. Although I have not studied this bird, I would lean strongly on Halcyon leucocephala
Has the ID been fully confirmed, as there are 3 suggestions with just 1 or 2 hits each ??
I just got hold of a friend who's a twitcher, he reckons because of the overlapping distribution it could be either. But his bet is on the Grey-Hooded. The lack of streaking on the head and flanks in this specimen seems to point to grey-hooded.
I have sent it here http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?... but you may need to be a member to see it, I'm not sure. They are usually fairly quick with their answers if an expert is online.
OK, I'll send this to the Bird Forum and we can see what the experts have to say about it. Let you know later.
Its funny, i was out by the Piesang River today, taking photo's of a Brown-Hooded co-incidentally, but its a male and he has black on his beak.
Malcolm, it does look like a Brown-hooded Kingfisher with regard to that reference. I think there is also variation between Female, male and juvenile that might be causing the confusion. i wish i had my field guide with me right now.
You might be right. Funny how the first one looks brown but the other two don't.
Starting to look more like a Brown
Just found this, take a look at the second pic in the Brown-hooded, it looks very similar. http://carolinabirds.org/HTML/AF_Corac_K...
The Grey-headed has a brown belly and the Woodland has a dark oval patch on each wing with a pale blue back up to the neck so that rules out both of those. The Brown-hooded has a black or brown back, while this is dark blue, which would seem to rule this out also. I do not have access to field guides which may show sub-species variations to these 3 species. Is it possible that there is another similar species. Based on the information I have (or don't have) I am not prepared to make any suggestion at the present time.
Quite right Janet, good observation, it is a Grey-headed Kingfisher. My apologies.
Brown and Grey are close but it says the difference in the beak. Going to be a tough call since they are so similar
Spotted on Jun 25, 2012
Submitted on Jun 25, 2012
