Babies everywhere......

 Belvide is one of our main ringing sites --but we have quite a few others where team members put in the hard yards--so I thought it would be a good idea to spend some time showcasing other sites operated by the group.

This morning Gareth was out bright and early at one of his farm sites to the south east of Birmingham. He has put in a lot of effort over recent years and his returns have been variable. However, we are sure that as time goes on this site will become a very rich source of birds for him and the group.

This morning's session gave a decent catch--and the pictures that Gareth sent to me illustrated that the site has been very productive during the breeding season so there should be a good number of birds around over coming months.

I have banged on a bit about how juvenile birds ( especially finches) often have very muted colours during their early weeks of life in order not to provoke aggression from especially the adult males.

Here are three classic examples:-

This juvenile Goldfinch has a plain fawn coloured head --the red white and black pattern will come in over the coming months

This juvenile Chaffinch is similarly drab--difficult to be certain if it is male or female yet.

It would be really difficult to tell which species this was as it is so drab!! It is in fact a juvenile Yellowhammer--not much chance of this annoying the adult males!!

Well done Gareth--I'm popping down later in the week to give him a hand--I'll report back on that later in the week.