A good night's lamping

Friday night saw us lamping at one of our favourite farms where we survey fields for birds at night as well as using the imager to try to catch and ring them.
We surveyed a lot of fields but some where beans or brassicas were growing were either devoid of birds or we couldn't see then because of the dense vegetation.
However, we still had a good catch including 2 Woodcock, 10 Skylarks a couple of Fieldfare, a redwing and a Grey Partridge.
woodcocks are pretty amazing with their eyes right on top of their heads giving them pretty well 360 vision.

Although not a great deal of use in the field, this picture shows one of the key ageing criteria for this species. The row of feathers I'm pointing at are called the primary coverts and in adult birds they are tipped white whereas in juveniles like this one, they have light brown tips

This fieldfare is a male. Although not fully shown in this picture, the blue/grey head feathers have small amounts of black at the centre of the feathers--in females the black centre is more obvious

Ageing fieldfares is usually quite straightforward and shows well in this photo.

The row of feathers to the left of the tip of my thumb are called the greater coverts. You can see the feathers towards the body have got brown tips--these are adult types feathers which the bird has moulted in over recent weeks. However, the feathers towards the outside of the wing are shorter and have white tips. These are juvenile feathers which the bird has not yet moulted--making this bird a juvenile--fledged this calendar year, somewhere in northern Scandinavia or further east!?