Date: 11/7/26 10:11 am From: flyingcarlini via NEBirds <flyingcarlini...> Subject: Re: [NEBirds] AOS updates feat. UNK Ornithology
Hello NEBirders,Still futilely agonizing over whether there's any way to confidently i.d. silent Neb. migrant and wintering marsh-wrens near the edge of their ranges. Made a screenshot comparison of an Eastern and Western who both have medium hue plumage, as many individuals from both species do, and had to go back and double check they were indeed different species because they look so darn similar:
-Shari Schwartz, Lincoln On Tuesday, November 3, 2026 at 09:46:24 AM CST, flyingcarlini via NEBirds <flyingcarlini...> wrote:
Hello NEBirders,Below is a collage of Western Marsh-wrens specifically in our area created as a personal primer if by chance the oompressed image is helpful to anyone else. All pics are from Neb. except the one from LaCreek SD just across the border that was included for its surprisingly bright reddish upperparts. Tried to represent the broad spectrum of individual plumages and omitted pics from June through fall to avoid juvenile plumage. Body parts shown with color variation all over the map: crown, flanks, breast, and face. The one uniform characteristic so far is flanks always seem to be a lighter color than upperparts in our Westerns - to varying degrees - but never a comparable hue vs the flanks in SOME Easterns that are nearly equally as reddish as upperparts (such as the bird on our checklist).
