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Posted by Trey on 21:40:58 07/05/06
In Reply to: Notes on flight posted by Alex Harper
Below is the text from an email answering my question to Peter Pyle who was kind enough to take photos of the primaries of the specimens of both the Red-billed and the White-tailed Tropicbird.
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Hi Trey -
I have a fair degree of field experience with all three species.
White-tailed is the smallest and I'd say most "buoyant" of the three.
Red-tailed is the largest and heaviest. Red-billed is also large but is not as "heavy" in flight as Red-tailed. I think the shallow wing beats you describe may fit Red-billed better than the other two species. It strikes me that I've seen something like this for Red-billeds off Mexico but have not seen exactly this sort of flight for White-tailed or Red-tailed. On the other hand, all three can have shallow and quick wing beats in certain wind conditions and so I wouldn't hang my hat on flight behavior as a reliable criterion to use. The plumage characters will go much farther in confirming the ID.
In the paragraph I wrote below, I intended to say that JUVENILE Red-billed Tropicbirds have orangish....bills.
Hope this helps,
Peter
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