The story of the season so far is the stop/go nature of the migration pattern. On Tuesday birds had been moving but that had largely stopped when we arrived on site yesterday. However, when we finished around 10am it was a pleasant surprise to find that we had ringed 69 new birds--again mostly warblers of the range we normally get.
We did ring 4 juvenile Reed Buntings which had clearly bred on the reserve, and here is a picture of the tail of one bird showing a couple of interesting features:-
We often see quite a bit of other wildlife on the reserve and this beast of a caterpillar walked calmly through the ringing site :-I've mentioned previously that the quality and shape of juvenile feathers helps in ageing many songbirds-and here is a prime example. Most of these feathers are very pointed-juvenile feature--but the central two are more rounded at the tip--these are adult type feathers which this bird has already moulted in. Secondly you can see small holes in the feathers -most juvenile feathers are not as robust as adult ones and any slight change in the quality of food is often reflected in weaknesses in feathers
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