Would any tanager experts know whether this is a hen White-lined tanager or a masked crimson tanager? Can't seem to find id photos of the masked crimson but it looks too grey to be a white-lined. Wings of Asia at Jurong
Would any tanager experts know whether this is a hen White-lined tanager or a masked crimson tanager? Can\'t seem to find id photos of the masked crimson but it looks too grey to be a white-lined. At Jurong
Don't think it is either a Tachyphonus - and surtianly not a White-lined - which I've taken care for servral times ! nor a Ramphocelus species which should have a much heavier bill.
White-lined tanager hens are uniform brownish but which species is on these pictures I have to search-out because at first sign, I'm also unable to tell.
Thanks for the info. I couldn't see anything else in the aviary it could be apart from either of these two species. I'm attaching a (not very good) photo of another female tanager which you might be able to identify. The only other tanagers on view were blue-greys but I didn't think they showed such strong dimorphism.
Agree with Chlidonias and vogelcommando on the attached photo, but the main photo is not any species of tanager. It looks like one of the members of the gray-headed sparrow species group, which are African relatives of the well-known house sparrow. The species in this African group can be fairly hard to distinguish from each other and identification often relies partially on distribution (obviously doesn't help in a zoo!), but this is probably southern/northern gray-headed sparrow.
Thanks for that. It certainly doesn't look like any tanagers from any of my identification resources and the pattern is very sparrow-like. Do you know if the species is dimorphic? If so, would this be a hen?
Not dimorphic; the sexes are identical. It is perhaps worth mentioning that a few authorities still consider the members of the gray-headed sparrow group as subspecies of a single species (instead of separate species). In that case the species is simply called gray-headed sparrow (without further specifications).
