What a difference a week makes!!

 Apologies for my lack of posts recently--lots going on so lots to report now that I'm having a breather!

After my last post it became obvious that we were breaking all sorts of records for our post- breeding/migration season at Belvide. There will be a run down on this in the next WMBC newsletter so I'll not dwell on it here. What the title to this post alludes to is that a couple of weeks ago we were concentrating on migrant warblers-Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs mainly as they were moving off to warmer climes. It has seemed no time at all until we are now firmly into a new season--dominated by birds coming TO us not AWAY from us in the form of birds from northern and eastern countries with much harsher winters.

We have never continued catching at Belvide  this late in previous years, but this year there have been so many incoming birds that we have decided to continue as long as there are birds to ring. Consequently I've had three sessions over the last couple of weeks which have really brought it home how the season has changed. We have caught almost 100 Redwing and good numbers of Redpoll. A real surprise last week was when a couple of Tree Sparrows turned up in a net having been largely absent from the reserve for long periods. We hope this is a sign of their return to what has been a 'hot spot' for this species.

I can't leave you without an insight into ageing birds, now can I ?? Redwing are generally quite easy to age--the first picture shows two of the key features of a juvenile ( ie bird of this year) :-

The yellow ring shows the tips to the so called tertial feathers and you can see they have white tips--but crucially the white also moves up the central feather shaft. This along with the obvious pointed tips to the tail feathers are juvenile features. The adult tertials in the next bird by contrast have no white on the tips so it is an adult ( ie born before 2020:-

Redwings are still moving through the country in big numbers. If there is a dark misty night why not stand outside for a few exciting minutes in the dark and listen for the high pitched 'seep' calls as the migrating birds keep in contact with each other!! So I hope we will have a few more at Belvide. More of which in later posts--the next post will be about other activities Belvide Ringers have been up to in the last couple of weeks.............