Another TON of birds!!

I must admit to being not very hopeful about this morning's visit because the wind was forecast to be NNW which is bad for our nets. However, as things turned out the wind speed was very low so it had little impact on the nest. As a result we had another great catch of 106 new birds of which 66 were Blackcaps--they are still piling though in big numbers !!
In addition we had 21 Chiffchaffs while other warbler numbers are dropping off fast as expected--Sedge warbler 5, Reed warbler 6, and Willow warbler 1.
Trainees had some great learning points from the first Meadow pipit of the season, a Marsh tit and a couple of Reed buntings--all of which are shown below.
First the Marsh tit:-

This bird shows classic Marsh tit characters:-small shiny cap, small discreet bib, smudgy cheeks, light spot at the base of the upper mandible, and no obvious light edges to the secondaries so no panel formed on the wing.

Ageing pipits can be quite tricky since the juveniles seem to moult their coverts and tertials in almost random ways unlike most species which have distinct patterns of moult. On this bird you can see the upper tertial ( the most inner group of feathers) has white edges rather than buff--and the inner most greater covert is broadly edged buff rather than all of the others which are edged cream. This is clearly a juvenile bird--and the first of many we hope.

One of the ways of identifying meadow pipit in the hand is by both the length and shape of the hind claw. As you can see here, the hind claw is very long and relatively straight. In tree pipit for example, this claw is much shorter and very curved.

This is an adult male Reed Bunting--but it has a brown head I can hear you saying.

In this next picture you can see a close up of the top of the head:-

If you look carefully you can see that the head feathers have brown tips but the lower part of the feathers is black. The newly moulted feathers provide an apparent brown head which means that these birds can feed in large flocks in winter without aggression because they all look like females. The brown tips however, gradually wear off during the winter to expose the black body of the feathers by next spring--just in time for the birds to begin breeding, attract mates and become aggressive towards other males--pretty clever!!

Reed Buntings can be tricky to age--but these two are relatively easy. The one on the left is the male above, and all the feathers are clearly broad and well rounded at the tips--an adult feature. The bird on the right is a juvenile ( born this year) and you can clearly see the pointed, typically juvenile shaped tail feathers.

A Wryneck has been sighted on the reserve this morning--now wouldn't that be a brilliant bird to ring.? We had already decided to have an extra session tomorrow morning-before the Wryneck was sighted so.......fingers crossed for the morning.