Home and Away

 I've mentioned previously that at this time of year it can be difficult catching large numbers of birds by conventional means because many are breeding and distributed more thinly on their territories. Out in mid-Wales Pat still has plenty of birds coming to his feeders from the many breeding pairs of Siskin in the surrounding area. For the rest of us it can be a lot of work for not much reward.

However, team members have been enthusiastically setting nets in their gardens, and catching birds such as this recently fledged House Sparrow in Kev's garden...

You can see the loose, fluffy plumage that young birds have--but you can also see the bright yellow flanges of the base of the beaks--the gape--again an indicator of juveniles.

Paul's also been regularly catching at the farm feeding station--and quite a few Stock Doves have been visiting. I though I would show a picture of the colourful patch on the side of the neck of this under studied species..

Feather colours are of two types. The first is where the feather has pigments embedded in the feather--but these feathers don't rely of pigments-they rely on the reflection and absorption of light. \as such, the colour can change--in this case they look green, but if the bird turns even a fraction they can look, blue or purple. That's the 'home' part of the title--so now let's look at 'away'.

Although we have lots of nestboxes at our sites, they are generally attracting Blue and Great Tits. Last year we inherited a nest box scheme in Herefordshire (ie away), which attracts exotic ( for us), species such as Pied Flycatcher and Redstart. Last weekend we had a delightful day ringing lots of 'Pied Fly' chicks with Gareth and his two beautiful daughters of 7 and 5 years old. Here's a picture of a brood of 7 healthy Pied Fly chicks

There was great excitement at one of the boxes when a female Redstart was seen leaving a box containing eggs. If they hatch and grow I hope to show some pics in a couple of weeks.

Our good friend Roger has a very large nestbox scheme also in Herefordshire and he generously allows members of our team to join him which gives them good experience. Jenni joined him at the weekend and they ringed over 100 Pied Fly chicks. His site also has breeding Wood Warbler and they managed to ring an adult bird. These are marginally bigger than a Willow Warbler--but they are much more striking in the amount of bright green plumage, with a striking yellow stripe over the eye ( supercilium ), and a bright yellow throat.

I hope to have more for you soon, as we build up to the start of the post-breeding/migration season at our sites.