Originally posted by boriscleto The PhotoID (beta) suggested Least as it's number 1 suggestion.
The other Empidonax were not even in the top 10.
How many of the
Empidonax species and how many examples of each does it have in its database? It is only able "to recognize 400 of North America’s most common bird species based on images" (see below).
Not much basis to work from.
Of the hundreds of Least Flycatchers I have seen singing that species' diagnostic song or had in the hand while banding, all (in breeding plumage) had a far more conspicuous eye ring and wing bars than the bird in the photos, not to mention shorter bill with dark tip to the lower mandible. Alder and Gray are the only species that come close to this bird. In my experience, Pacific-slope, Least, Hammond's and Dusky all come in third place as candidates for this bird.
From the Merlin website:
"About Merlin Bird Photo ID
Can a computer identify bird species in photos? Researchers at Cornell Tech and Caltech have partnered with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to train Merlin Bird Photo ID to recognize 400 of North America’s most common bird species based on images.
Sometimes Merlin gets it right, just like magic. Other times, Merlin gets it wrong–sometimes way wrong. What’s going on behind the scenes–and how can you help us keep improving Merlin’s accuracy?
The challenge: Asking computers to identify bird species is a challenge not only because some species look so alike, but also because their shape varies from moment to moment. On top of that, photographs of birds often include complex backgrounds, and the birds may be far away or blurry.
The solution: Computer vision researchers create “convolutional network” systems that use patterns in data to train the computer and improve its performance. These systems require massive numbers of images as well as accurate image labels such the type of object, and where the object is in the image. Fortunately, bird watchers are renowned for taking lots of photos and for contributing millions of observations in citizen-science projects. Thousands of people have contributed photos and tagged them to teach Merlin to recognize birds."
---------- Post added 16th Jun 2015 at 17:00 ----------
The detail on the back and wings is beautiful -- the primaries, secondaries and tertials stick out almost like 3-D.
I agree on Swainson's, based on my experience with them while growing up and working on the Prairies (not to mention subsequent trips to this species' range). Juvenile to be exact, somewhere on the gradient from intermediate to dark morphs. The dark morph gets common west of the Sask-Alberta border.