Back in action -AT LAST !!!

The rain finally eased off, the winds slowed a little and the moon has both started to wane, and kept itself below the horizon until the early morning--so thermal imaging and lamping has started again--whoopee!!
Friday night saw us wandering the fields at our regular farm site, and although we had a few technical problems we ended up with a very interesting catch indeed. Only 11 new birds but of 6 different species:- 3 Skylark, 3 Fieldfare, 2 Jack Snipe, and 1 each of Stock Dove, Grey Partridge and Redwing

We have shown pictures of Skylark previously--but I never tire of seeing them so here's another from Friday:-

 

What we haven't previously shown you is the strange structure of the 'secondary flight feathers' These are the main feathers on the inner half of the wing--and on most birds they are fairly unremarkable. However, on Skylarks the secondaries are a beautiful and a different shape to any other common bird-that we've seen anyway!. You can clearly see on this isolated secondary feather that rather than having a smoothly rounded end as in most species, they have a distinctive dip between the inner and

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outer webs of the feathers. Evolutionary biologists would point to this as an adaptation adding to the success in evolution of this species--but quite what advantage this bestows upon the Skylark I haven't a clue.

Our regular morning catches of large numbers of Redwing have stopped until late Autumn 2020--but there are still a lot of these Scandinavian thrushes around. Their favoured roosting places are in dense vegetation such as Rhododendron or Holly bushes--but occasionally we find them roosting on the ground as did this bird. It's usually when the weather is reasonably mild and the shelter of dense bushes isn't quite so important.

I've never really understood why they got the name because as you can see it' only part of the underwing that's red--and even then it's more of a rusty orange than 'red'. Look out for these birds in often large flocks feeding on invertebrates found on bare fields during the winter.

I have shown pictures of Jack Snipe ( 'Jack' an old word for 'small') previously, but again I never get sick of this delightful bird so here goes another:-

 

You can see how small these birds are against my own ( small) hands. Although the flash tends to bleach colours, it is possible to see the main stripes on the back and head as pale yellow--pointing to this being a juvenile bird ( along with other features)--adult birds have golden stripes.

Other team members have caught Stock Doves roosting on the ground but this was the first one that I have caught. Again the picture doesn't do it justice--especially the lovely metallic green lustre round the back of the neck. With imagination you can also just make out some darker feathers near the bend of the wing showing that this is a juvenile bird--the dark feathers are remaining from when the bird first left the nest.

 

AND THIS MORNING--Kev and son Gareth put sleep aside and visited another farm for some early morning lamping with the thermal imager--followed by a mist netting session at some feeders on the farm. They caught a very respectable 3 Skylark, 1 Fieldfare and 1 Redwing in the fields, then

 3 Linnet, 3 Chaffinch, 3 House Sparrow, 2 Dunnock and a Wren at the feeder.