Help With Brown Flycatcher like bird please

[BirdMan]

Northern California creekside wooded area.

[TooFly]

You sure it’s a Flycatcher and not something like a Townsends Solitare?

[psweet]

It's not a Solitaire -- no eye-ring, wrong wing markings. The smudgy undertail coverts would fit a Western Wood-Pewee.

[BirdMan]

Dark flycatcher has to be PeeWee?

[Winged LEGO]

Sure looks like a Phainopepla to me.

[TooFly]

3 minutes ago, Winged LEGO said:

Sure looks like a Phainopepla to me.

Female Phainopepla was my other thought since it’s missing the distinct eye ring of a Solitare...

[psweet]

I think Phainopepla is right. I was avoiding that because I thought that they weren't found anywhere near that far north and the shot's not complete enough to support an ID as a rarity -- a quick look at Sibley's range maps shows that they go farther north in California than I would have guessed.

[Tony Leukering]

Phainopepla -- note the pale-fringed under-tail coverts and the white fringing to the wing coverts

[Charlie Spencer]

I must know even less about bird anatomy than I suspected.  Aren't the undertail coverts hidden behind the branch the bird is perched on?  Is this bird facing toward the camera or away from it?

[Jerry Friedman]

The bird is facing the camera--we can see its underparts and wings.  Some of the undertail coverts are visible below the branch.

[Charlie Spencer]

Thanks.  For some reason I interpreted the image as the bird facing away from us.

[Jerry Friedman]

That's happened to me, though for this one I have to make an effort to see it that way.

[Charlie Spencer]

7 hours ago, Jerry Friedman said:

That's happened to me, though for this one I have to make an effort to see it that way.

Okay, I see the feet on the branch now.  I was hung in some kind of M. C. Escher loop.

[Tony Leukering]

21 hours ago, Charlie Spencer said:

I must know even less about bird anatomy than I suspected.  Aren't the undertail coverts hidden behind the branch the bird is perched on?  Is this bird facing toward the camera or away from it?

Looking at the tail, one can determine that it is the under side of the tail that we see.  That is because the rectrices that are foremost are the outermost rectrices, with the others layered on top (behind, given this view).  If we were looking at the top of the tail, we would see primarily the central rectrices, with, perhaps, suggestions of others to the outside of those feathers.