Recent rambling

Last few weeks have been really busy but not really with birds. At least not living birds. Last week I spent a few days in Frankfurt - my 97 yo grandmother Helene had passed away. May she rest in peace - she was a brave and strong woman. She had a tough life, that included surviving WW2 and starting new lives in too many countries,; her strong character and will is truly inspiring to my family. Here she is with her brother Hermann in 1932, when she was 13:

While organising her funeral, I found some time to go with my brother to Senckenberg Museum of Natural History. When I last visited there in July 2016 I discovered a potentially interesting wheatear. I did not take full measurements back then, so this time I took the full biometric set. Hopefully soon its identity will be determined.

Black Wheatear (top) and mystery wheatear (bottom)

I took the opportunity to look at some more nightjars. I am involved in a large nightjar phylogeny project with Prof. Martin Collinson from University of Aberdeen. One of the things we want to check is Red-necked Nightjar phylogeny. The two subspecies - ruficollis (Iberia) and desertorum (N Africa) look strikingly different, and possibly have different vocalisations too.  This is a simplistic morphological comparison - males, ruficollis (left two) and desertorum (right two):

The last few days have been all about Champions of the Flyway. Sadly, I could not go this year, but did my best to support the project from here. It was yet again a fantastic race and event, well done to the organisers, teams, donors and supporters worldwide.

Jonathan!

Yesterday morning I had a frustrating experience. After schoolrun I walked with my dog in Heigham Park that is near our house. I heard from the bottom of the park a 'funny' Chiffchaff song - 3-4 sequences. The soft initial notes sounded good for Iberian Chiff, but I couldn't hear the terminal trill from that distance. I approached the bird and got my phone ready to sound record, but it went silent and I did not see or hear it again. Eventually, I cannot exclude a 'funny' normal Chiffchaff, so will leave it like that.

In about 10 days I am going away for fieldwork in Spain and Portugal, so expect an increase in blogging frequency!

Nightjar and wheatear mysteries

Got back early this morning from 48 hours in Frankfurt. My main goal was to celebrate my grandmother's 97th birthday. But since I was there I arranged a visit to the scientific collections at Senckenberg Naturmuseum. I met up with the curator Dr. Gerald Mayr. Gerald was extremely friendly and cooperative - many thanks Gerald! I collected there data for my slow Nubian Nightjar project. Hopefully it will pick up soon. There are six Nubian Nightjars in the collection - 2 nubicus from Sudan, and 4 tamaricis from SW Yemen. 

Nubian Nightjars - tamaricis (left) and nubicus (right)

After I was done with the nightjars, out of curiosity, I asked Gerald to have a look at some 'black' wheatears. I hoped to find a lost warriae specimen. In between Black Wheatears from NW Africa I was amazed to find this small wheatear - clearly not leucura. It was collected by Dr. Eduard Ruppell in 1823. The label says 'Egyptien' but back in those days Egypt included parts of Sudan. It seems that in 1823 Ruppell indeed collected along the Nile in northern Sudan, close to Ambukol. But I will need to do more homework to try and come up with a more exact location and date.
This still needs to be confirmed, but it is probably a new specimen of 'Saxicola syenitica' - a lost and mysterious wheatear taxon, that is known from only one specimen collected by Theodor von Heuglin in 1852 in the same general area of northern Sudan / southern Egypt. The holotype is kept at Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Austria. Check a description and discussion of the holotype here on Researchgate, or an abstract is available here if you're not on Researchgate.
I was in a great rush so didn't have time to take a full set of measurements. But I should be back in Frankfurt fairly soon. However, if it is 'Saxicola syenitica' as it provisionally seems, perhaps it can provide more insight to understand what this poorly known taxon is. Quite exciting. Surely more will be written about this specimen.

Putative 'Saxicola syenitica' (top) and Black Wheatear Oenanthe leucura (bottom)