Just one more to go!

Yesterday we had our penultimate Belvide session of 2020. In many ways it was a typical end of season/early October session. We were all full of eager anticipation given the masses of rare birds around the country--but we were also aware that the reality would probably be run of the mill.

In the end we struggled to make 36 new birds--and of course there were no rare birds. However, there were a couple of high spots. First was our first Redwing of the season. These are small members of the thrush family which breed in northern latitudes and far west as Iceland and as far east  as Russia. So its always exciting to see them with us as harbingers of the winter. We should be catching many more over the coming months--watch here for results!

Here'e the very bird. You can see the two key features--first the cream stripe above the eye and second you can just about see the red ( actually orange) patch under the wing which gives the bird its name.

October is typically the month when countless numbers of Europe's smallest bird--the Goldcrest--fly over the north sea from Scandinavia to spend the winter with us alongside our resident Goldcrests. We can't say if the 5 we caught were British or Scandinavian ( unless one gets recaptured over there next year)--but we thought you may be interested in seeing how you can tell males from females.

Most of the time you can only see a yellow stripe down the centre of the crown as shown here. However, sometimes if the bird gets aggressive, or the wind catches the head feathers you can see orange feathers under the yellow ones. If you see orange then the bird is a male.

This bird is a male. During the breeding season males display to females and they are able to open up the yellow patch and erect the orange feathers to show off--pretty cool!!

Finally, I've banged on a lot over the weeks about ways of ageing and sexing birds--sometimes using quite subtle features of feathers, tail shapes and so on. So it's really refreshing to show you a species where ageing and sexing is really 'in your face'. This bird is a Lesser Redpoll--the fact that it has so much pink on the breast tells you straight away that it's male ( pink breast) and adult ( the amount of pink. What a little stunner to end the session with!!