Thursday 28 February 2013

Sambar Mugimaki (Mugimaki Flycatcher)




The Mugimaki Flycatcher (Ficedula mugimaki) is a small passerine bird of eastern Asia belonging to the genus Ficedula in the Old World flycatcher family, Muscicapidae. The name "mugimaki" comes from Japanese and means "wheat-sower". Also known as the Robin Flycatcher. It is 13 to 13.5 centimetres long. It has a rattling call and often flicks its wings and tail. The adult male has blackish upperparts with a short white supercilium behind the eye, a white wing-patch, white edges to the tertials and white at the base of the outer tail-feathers. The breast and throat are orange-red while the belly and undertail-coverts are white.
The female is grey-brown above with a pale orange-brown breast and throat. She lacks white in the tail, has one or two pale wingbars rather than a white wing-patch and has a supercilium that is either faint or absent entirely. Young males are similar to the female but have a brighter orange breast, white in the tail and a more obvious supercilium. It breeds in eastern Siberia and north-east China. Migrating birds pass through eastern China, Korea and Japan in spring and autumn. The species winters in South-east Asia, reaching Malaysia, western Indonesia and the Philippines. There is a single record of a vagrant bird in Alaska; on Shemya Island in 1985.A bird in Humberside, England in 1991 was not accepted into Category A, a wild bird, but was put in a Category D, meaning likely to be of captive origin. It was retained in Category D following a review in 2009.




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