That's more like it!

Another day of uncertainty yesterday as the weather forecast for this morning kept changing by the hour---again!!. In the end I had to make a decision and fortunately I opted to run the session. I'm really glad I did because apart from a short period of dampness when we closed the nets for a while, the conditions were almost perfect for ringing.
It became apparent that birds had started to migrate and by the end of the session we had ringed 87 new birds--far and away the most so far this season. Migrant warblers were well represented with 23 Chiffchaff, 16 each of Reed Warbler and Blackcap, 10 Sedge and 3 Willow Warblers.
We also caught a couple of juvenile Goldcrests and I've included a picture of one to help folk identify this species in juvenile plumage:-

As you can see in this view there is no yellow streak on the crown in very young birds, although in a few weeks this feature will be present--so beware at this time of year, it's still a Goldcrest.

 

We also caught a recently fledged Reed Warbler, and this view of its tail shows an interesting feature.

 

 

The different coloured marks on the tail are called either growth or fault bars. If you imagine this bird in the nest, all of its tail feathers start to grow at the same time-if the amount and/or quality of the food the parents feed the chicks with changes--this will be reflected in the materials used to grow the feathers. I can't say exactly what change has occurred in this case, but it may have been a cold/wet period when the parents had difficulty finding food and the growth bars appeared as a result--all lined up as the feathers grew in synchrony. We have seen some birds where this has weakened the feathers so much that all or most of the tail feathers have broken off at the fault line.