Whilst ringing at Sabkhat Al Fasl in January I trapped a
quite grey/brown looking Chiffchaff with few greenish tones. Unfortunately,
with Chiffchaffs, things get complicated in the Middle East. With Mountain
Chiffchaffs nearby, which look quite like Siberian Chiffchaff tristis, and a series of taxa with
intriguing combinations of abietinus or intermediate plumage but tristis-like
calls (the brevirostris/caucasicus/menzbieri group), diagnosing Chiffchaffs can
be a demanding exercise. There is only one confirmed record of tristis in Saudi Arabia, a bird I
trapped and ringed at the same site in Januray 2014, and the bird give a
different impression and appeared much greyer. The bird I trapped seems closer
to abietinus or some other integrade.
To make things more complicated apparently many tristis can actually look like this and a recent Dutch DNA study
revealed that most abietinus-look-alikes are in fact tristis by DNA. For the time being to identify Siberian Chiffchaff
I am only looking at classic tristis
(no green tones at all, buff face and flanks) and call like a tristis and unfortunately this bird did
not fit properly.
