Led up the garden path and sat down

At a community gathering one of our neighbours told me that she had breeding Satin Flycatchers on her property which surprised her as her field guide suggested they were birds of damp forested gullies, not the open woodland of her property.  She gave a pretty good description referred to the iridescent blue colouring.

This got me more than a little excited and a couple of days later I met her and watched the nest, occupied by a female Flycatcher.

 On looking at the photos my overall impression of the bird was that on the back it was a "bit light" in colour to be a Satin Flycatcher, but I couldn't be sure.  So it was entered in eBird as a spuh "Leaden/Satin Flycatcher".    The male bird was steadfast in refusing to appear in the time I had available.

So a couple of days later I went back, this time with my telescope (but not the phone connection - probably a mistake).  As I got to the site a bird flew from the nest and another one took over.  Proving O'Reilly's Addendum (Murphy was an optimist) when I got the scope on the nest it was again the female.  However after about 15 minutes I heard a flycatcher calling and the male flew in and assumed the position.

As the nest is shaded the bird did look quite dark blue.

 However a later image showed it to be grey rather than blue so unfortunately it was Leaden.

 A couple more snaps of the male bird on the nest.

 It was very difficult to get an image of the bird off the nest!  It flew in, landed on a branch  and started brooding.  The one image I got of the entire bird it had its back to me, while it was the front I wanted to see!

My neighbour then sent some images she had taken of which this is an example.

The first point to note is that the bird does in this shot, in full sun, look iridescent blue.  I think I would have been wondering about Satin from that image.  However what it shows is the border of the dark breast meeting the wing at right angles rather than pointing down - as it does in Satin. So that is the mnemonic in the subject of this post: Leaden breast goes up Satin goes down.

The photo is interesting also in how to assess its quality.  Due to the tricky lighting the background is washed out, which would cause a photographer to rate it down.  However in terms of showing the key features of the bird it is extremely good.  Thus using fitness for purpose as the essential measure of quality, it is very highly rated.

As a final word in identification, some years ago a senior member of COG commented that in the eucalypt woodland "if there is any doubt between the two species it.s always going to be Leaden".

There are always interesting elements to unusual bird sightings.  This is the first breeding record for Leaden Flycatcher in the Carwoola area (in 12 years).  Secondly there is a Noisy Friarbird nest in a nearby tree.  I am reasonably confident that others have noted these two species ending to breed near each other (although we have had Noisy Friarbirds breed at home and I haven't spotted Leaden Flycatchers in the vicinity).  Thirdly, every time the male returned to the nest he called several times as he flew from tree to tree heading towards the nest.