hybrid Black \u00d7 Say’s Phoebe<\/a> in California a couple of years ago.\u00a0 Hybrid phoebes are among the most interesting of all birds, because they allow us a unique window into the genetic control of song.<\/p>\nWhile recording audio of its song, I got some decent binocular looks at the singing bird.\u00a0 It looked quite typical of Eastern Phoebes, with a dark brown head; lighter brown upperparts and wings with a slightly grayer tone; faint brownish wingbars; and underparts that were mostly pale, but slightly darker on the upper breast, fading gradually down to the belly, which had a slightly yellowish cream color.\u00a0 From the front the bird had the very vague “vested” appearance caused by the slight contrast between darker flanks and yellow central belly, but this is not unusual on pure Eastern Phoebes.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I can’t recall the precise color of the throat or the level of contrast between throat and face, which would have been a useful mark.\u00a0 Ultimately, if I had seen the bird and never heard it, I might never have suspected anything amiss.<\/p>\n
I think there are two lessons to learn here: 1) hybrid phoebes are becoming more and more common in Colorado; and 2) not all of them may be visually identifiable, but the voice gives them away.\u00a0 All the more reason to start recording audio!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another possible hybrid phoebe in Boulder, Colorado.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[134,132,205,135,133],"class_list":["post-2898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hybrid-birds","tag-black-phoebe","tag-eastern-phoebe","tag-hybrid-phoebe","tag-sayornis-nigricans","tag-sayornis-phoebe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2898"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5051,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898\/revisions\/5051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/EAPHprobHybrids-NDP2011-02-51.jpg\" "\\"EAPHprobHybrids-NDP2011-02-51\\"")
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