Mark and I ended up having a good look at three wing-barred phylloscs in Mamzar Park yesterday. Birds 1 and 3 were pretty straight forward and as well as looking the part, they both were very vocal and gave typical Hume's calls. Bird 3 even gave a short burst of song, the distinctive single, descending, high-pitched note.
Bird 2, however, was a different story. It was clearly Mark's bright bird from last week but seemed to be more ambiguous, giving range of calls. At first, it sounded (to my ears) like a classic YBW but then would call like a Hume's. To look at, it seems to be showing a few pro-YBW features like bare-parts colour and a strong second wing-bar, but could it just be a very bright Hume's?
Please click the eBird link below for photos and sound recordings:
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S51325539
Comments very welcome.
My bright bird from last week....
The songram from yesterday's bird shows the obvious disyllabic call of Hume's.
A friend of mine suggested forwarding the calls and sonogram to Magnus Robb at Sound Approach (magnus.robb@me.com). He says it looks very much like a YBW until you hear the calls.
I still think that two of my recordings sound very like YBW and that sonograms look interesting. Admittedly, one of the calls sounds like Hume's but recordings one and three on my eBird post look very high pitched. There is an interesting article on the calls below which suggests that only YBW would rise above 7kHz.
http://www.warbler.phytoconsult.nl/humei.htm
I'm less convinced though that this looks totally YBW and think it could be a bright Hume's.
Check this out: https://www.zin.ru/journals/zsr/content/2004/zr_2004_13_1_Redkin.pdf