The wind yesterday was unhelpfully from the north and we feared a poor catch--but managed a reasonable 66 new birds--as usual composed mostly of migrant warblers again.
Now that most of the team are very familiar with these species we can spend a little more time examining the birds in a bit more detail and showing our visitors some aspects they have probably never seen before. Here are a few random pictures of the kind of insights we were able to pass on:-
First up was a kingfisher. Always a crowdpleaser anyway, this turned out to be an adult male. It was a male because the lower mandible was all black ( females have an orange patch). There were three clear adult features. Overall the wing is bluey rather than greeny in a juvenile; second the legs and feet are all orange with no dark patches--finally and crucially, as you can see in the picture, the flight feathers were being moulted--you can see a secondary feather regrowing in this picture and there was a primary feather also being moulted on each wing.
Next up was a Blackcap--which at first sight looked like an adult male with a complete black cap. However, on close examination you can see the tiny remnants of brown juvenile feathers. This was obviously from a very early brood and has already moulted most of its cap feathers.
Juvenile Robins always cause confusion. This was a very recently fledged bird--so why no red on the breast? The general consensus is that while the young birds still need some help from their parents, they have brown breast feathers so as not to elicit aggression especially from the adult male--it's dad! Over the coming weeks this bird will replace these brown feathers with red ones--at which point the parents will force it away from the territory.
Lastly here is a shot of the crown feathers of two Sedge Warblers:-
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