Migration moving up a notch

Team members have been very active at several sites since my last post, and have ringed over 400 new birds--mostly migrant warblers--showing just how much warbler migration has increased in the last week or so.

Sticking with our theme of sharing interesting details of some of our birds, here is a small selection of the 400+

Many of you will be familiar with Pied Wagtails running around in car parks, shopping centres and school grounds--but they look much sharper black and white than this bird. It's a recently fledged juvenile Pied Wagtail in rather more drab, overall grey plumage until it moults into its much smarter garb. Gareth was quite lucky to get this bird because Pied Wagtails are notorious in the uncanny ability to see and avoid mist nets--well done Gareth.

I have already shown pictures of wings to show how we identify Willow Warblers from Chiffchaffs--but here are a couple of pictures to show how (even in the field) easy it is to separate juvenile Willow Warblers from adults at this time of year.

Essentially, juveniles are really bright yellow on the underside, compared to an adult.....

....which is much whiter with only a few ( variable) streaks of yellow underneath. This is easy to see in the field.

Finally for now, we do bang on a bit about juvenile plumage, but it is remarkable how different juvenile plumage is in certain species. Such as...

This is a recently fledged Robin--with overall blotchy plumage--and no red on the breast at all. This reduces aggression from the parents ; but it's short lived as the red breast soon moults in and the parents eventually drive the young away from their territory.

Not as dramatically different from adult plumage, that of juvenile Greenfinches is nevertheless quite distinctive.....

In general, the colours are muted--but the stripy breast and belly feathers are classic juvenile features of Greenfinch for a few weeks after fledging.

Team members will be out regularly over the coming week--so any interesting birds or plumage types will feature on here.......