More Hume's stuff

Ah, the little darlings... it was Christmas assembly at Lizzie's school this morning so I spent an hour listening to the in-tune warblings of 60 Primary Schoolers. Then to work, but if I was going to turn up at 11.30, I wouldn't get parked, so solved that problem by going off to the Donmouth for another hour with my own scratched bins and RememBird and tried to get some recordings. This I did, just. Haven't had time to sort them all out but have put an audible one on putfile.

Try and ignore the traffic noise, howling wind and assorted cracklings, turn it up LOUD and listen to rather boring HLW call here.

Got a crappy sonagram out of it, and it confirms my sharp(!) perception of a flat monosyllabic call with a hint of a downturn. The 5 kHz frequency is lower than your Yellow-broweds, and the call is very short, about 0.14 s, which is shorter than YBW but within range of HLW. It's not the most typical Humey call, but I think it corresponds to the 'forceful dsweet' of the Collins Guide. I bet Yellow-broweds could do that too, but they also do their characteristic calls as well. I wish this bird would do something more characteristic of Hume's, like an upward inflecting or disyllabic call, but it doesn't.

Other links:
Other Hume's and Yellow-browed calls, showing variation at here, here and here.

Finder's report and photo for this bird here. (12th and 13th December entries).

Plumage: in the sunshine today the bird looked a bit brighter on occasions... with a mossy green dusting to the uppers (not YBW-green, though :-)) . On he left wing there is a very thin but complete median covert bar, but on the right only a couple of feathers tipped pale.