Busy Busy Busy!!

 What a week--and it's only Wednesday!!. We had a frustrating weekend with inaccurate weather forecasts, strong winds and rain--and no ringing. So the team gathered on Monday at Belvide itching to make up for missed time--and we really did. We ringed 162 new birds, most of which were migrants. As well as 32 Sedge warblers and 22 each of Reed warblers and Blackcaps, the most numerous species was Sand Martin with 44 individuals. The weather was dull, still and cool meaning that the martins were flying low to catch insects --making them a bit easier to catch. 

I've included a few pics to point out a couple of features of Sand Martins:-

This picture shows how we age this species. The bird on the left is a juvenile hatched earlier this year as can be seen by all the white edges to many of the feathers. The adult on the right has plain brown feathers.

Over the years we have noticed a variety of pale tips to juvenile Sand Martin feathers. Most are white or cream:-

However, at the other end of the scale are some birds like this one, where the tips are almost orange:-

We've never seen any reason for this--it may be genetic--or it may be staining by the sand in the nest burrows?? Any genuine answers gratefully received!

The other great birds we caught were our first 3 Lesser Whitethroats of the season. Here is a picture --but I will expand on some interesting stuff about these birds at a later date.

Tuesday saw a couple of us at Tom's workplace doing a demonstration of ringing to a small group of families. It's always great fun seeing the wonder and delight on kids ( and adults!) at these sessions--which made up for a rather poor selection of birds with Blue and Great tits the only species we ringed.

This morning we had two teams out. Gareth ( one man team!!) was operating his farm site and had a superb catch of 42 new birds of 14 species including Greenfinch, Linnet, Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Whitethroat and Reed Warblers. Another 3 Yellowhammers confirmed what a good site this is for these and other species. We are really chuffed for Gareth in that he is now starting to enjoy himself by ringing good numbers of interesting species after all the effort he has put in!!

A young male Greenfich

And a young Linnet

While Gareth was ploughing ahead on his site, the massed band of other group members rocked up for the regular Wednesday session at Belvide. Things were a tad quieter than on Monday with only 69 birds ringed--again mainly warblers of the usual species BUT star bird of the day was this season's first Grasshopper Warbler!!-so named because of the reeling song reminiscent of some grasshopper species.

It's absolutely fair to describe Grasshopper Warblers as little brown jobs--but there are some really subtle, beautiful dimensions to their plumage. First, here's the whole bird--small and streaky--and just to help observers--they scuttle around on the ground in deep vegetation most of the time.

These birds belong to the genus 'Locustella'--which tend to have very rounded tails--unfortunately not well shown in this bird which has shorter than normal central tail feathers.

Other features of this warbler are:-

spotted undertail coverts

and long pink legs

This bird happened to be an adult female. Female because it had the remains of a brood patch on the belly; adult because of the very worn feathers on the tail and outer wing--contrasting with the newly moulted in replacement feathers on the inner wing:-

We also caught a juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker--these young birds can be aged easily for several weeks after leaving the nest--by having a red patch on the crown of the head as can be clearly seen here. These feathers will be replaced by back ones over the coming weeks.

The excitement continues tomorrow with Ben working his superb new site and a few of us operating at Belvide again---news about these tomorrow!!