Another migrant fest.

Despite our problems with the weather forecasts, we still managed a cracking weekend of ringing at Belvide.
In summary we ringed a very respectable 94 new birds--of which 80 were migrants. The more numerous as usual were Reed, Sedge, Blackcap and Chiffchaff. But today we had our first Lesser Whitethroat of this season. These are always just that little bit special. Even more special was the Pied Flycatcher that turned up out of the blue. This is only the third individual of this species we have ringed at the res--previous ones in 2007 1nd 2016. Later in the day the Belvide birders found a second bird ( without a ring), making it a bit of a red letter day for us.

 

The shape of the white areas on the wing feathers confirmed that this was a juvenile bird--we wonder where it was hatched--Wales or Northern Britain. We may get to know if someone handles it again in a nesting area in future years.

 

 

This rear view shows the almost black tail, Our guides suggest that this is probably a juvenile male, although its difficult to be certain and probably safest to leave unsexed.

Several times on this blog I've mentioned ID or other features which are useful to ringers with a bird in the hand--but which are of no use in the field. There are lots of Willow Warblers about at the moment. Most of them are juveniles and it's relatively easy to age them in the field as they are mostly bright yellow on the whole of the throat and belly--as shown in this bird:-

 

In contrast, the adult birds at this time of year show a yellow throat with a mostly white belly ( sometimes with some feint yellow streaks) as shown here:-

 

 

Just beware Wood Warblers--they are even brighter yellow on the throat and gleaming white on the belly with much greener upper parts.

 

Looking forward to Wednesday's session--wonder what will drop in?