Classical Redpolls!

For more than a week now a group of 30-40 Redpolls have been visiting our garden and surroundings. It's a mixed group with both Lesser and Mealy Redpolls. Today I succeeded in catching one of each species. Both were classical examples of both species! Below of short photo study of the birds:

Lesser Redpoll (Acanthis cabaret), looks like a 1cy with a moulted GC9 (see arrow), male (hint of pink in rump)

 Mealy Redpoll (Acanthis flammea), 1cy male, note the 5 retained outer-GC and tertails

I would be happy with unstreaked undertailcoverts in combination with a white rump:)

 And a nice comparison of the two species!

Chaff- and Greenfinches

My last post was almost 1,5 months ago, far too long ago! Now I have some time again and I will post some blogs again :)

The past weeks the weather has been very bad, with lots of rain and wind. I've done some ringing the last month in the garden, not much of interest but last monday I had quite a decent morning with Greenfinches and Chaffinches.

Lots of Greenfinches and Chaffinches have been coming to our feeders which is nice. Usually when I put up my net I catch a Greenfinch and then all the Greenfinches know the net and I won't catch them anymore during the session. Due to the dreary weather last monday the net was hardly visible resulting in an increase of Greenfinch catches. This gave me a chance to have a close look at them again. They're certainly not the easiest to age, so it's a nice practice to catch some. Chaffinches usually see the net very well, they fly towards the net and just in front of it they bend off..

I managed to catch:

Blue Tit 4 - 2

Chaffinch 3 -

Greenfinch 5 -

House Sparrow 2 -

Total 14 - 2

 Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris), adult male

Two wing photos of both adult male Greenfinches

Compare those to the wing photo of this 1 cy male Greenfinch:

Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris), 1cy male; note the difference in the pattern/colour of the tertails, secondaries, greater coverts, primary coverts and alula's compared to the adult males.

I ringed three Chaffinches, 2 adult males and 1 cy female.

 Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), adult male

Tail of an adult male Chaffinch

Roosting in the Reed

Wednesday evening I headed to Bram in Nijmegen. We had planned the Thursday to do some ringing. When we woke up the next morning a look outside and a look on Buienradar.nl made us want to stay in our bed, just awful weather! There was a strong wind blowing outside and Buienradar told us a lot of raining was coming our way. It would still be dry a few hours so we decided to head out and open some nets. Throughout the morning we caught the incredible amount of 4 birds: 2 Great Tits, a Blackcap and a Nuthatch.

Nuthatch (Sitta europaea), juvenile male; lots of chestnut-brown feathers on the flanks and undertailcoverts.

 indicating a male.

In the afternoon - after the many millimetres of rain - the weather became better and the sun was shining. We decided to head out again and do some work. Bram is going to ring the entire autumn (from August to November) at the Ooijse Graaf so some maintenance work was needed. Before we did some work we did some birdwatching, hearing Middle-spotted Woodpecker, Green Woodpecker and some Hawfinches.

Two weeks ago I passed my driving exam so I'm in the possession of a driving license finally: I'm a very happy ringer now! Bram's mum was so kind to let us use her car to drive to the Ooijse Graaf with all our equipment. The drive went smooth (I didn't drive over any children) and after we arrived the hard work could start.

 We transported a lot of wooden planks with us so we could build some platforms for in the reeds.

I pull weird faces when I'm concentrating.. 

We were able to make a few platforms; we stabilized the path in the reeds very well now, no danger of drowning anymore, haha! Some cleaning of the net rides was also done. Around 1930 Bram's mum came along and we had a nice dinner in the Ooijse Graaf, seeing the sun go down.

As the weather stayed stable, we decided to open some nets in the reeds to try our luck with roosting swallows/ and or yellow wagtails. We put a tape near the nets and then we could start the waiting. Some 30 Yellow Wagtails and equal numbers of Barn Swallows dropped in to roost, togehter with a few hundred starlings - we didn't want too many of those in the net though. The catch was quite decent, as it was the first roosting session. The number of Barn Swallows that found their way into our nets was a little bit dissapointing: 1. But the we had a the 11 Yellow Wagtails hanging in the net, which was a real treat! The 11 Yellow Wagtails existed out of 9 adult males and 2 juveniles. 

In an upcoming blog post I will write something about the variation in Yellow Wagtails; those I've caught here in the Netherlands and those I've caught in Israel. 

 Common Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), juvenile female left, juvenile male right; females show a light grey iris whilst males have a completely dark iris.

Both juveniles were busy with their post-juvenile moult. The female (below) was in a further stage of post-juvenile moult than the male (above) was.

Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica), juvenile

Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla flava), juvenile

Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla flava), adult male

So more on the Yellow Waggies later!

A Yellow Ending

Our last ringing session of the year was held at my site and it's clear the woods have become really empty now.. Last year saw us ringing on the 10th of July as well and last year's session stood in big contrast with the ringing today. The birds have gone quiet, only very few birds were singing. The Robins continue, with every now and then a Song Thrush but otherwise it's quiet. No singing Wood Larks, Tree Pipits, Redstart or Pied Flycatchers (and so on) anymore. I think the latter two have moved away from their breeding grounds already, I didn't observe a single bird of both species. I was surprised to hear both Woodcock and Nightjar still singing during this time of year. I was able to make a recording of the Nightjar, as it was singing from a reasonable distance.

Nightjar, Caprimulgus europaeus by Fmeijer

During this time of year it should be booming with juvenile birds. There were quite a few juvenile tits etc. around but none were found in the nets. And if those are missing out, the numbers of birds ringed can be considered quite poor. Sometimes it's just a matter of luck..

The ringing today was not particularly boring, as the species diversity was reasonable - for the amount of birds being caught. The highlight of the morning was the male Yellowhammer that finally found its way into the net, after so much avoiding of the nets:)

Blackbird 1 - 2 new juvenile, retrap adult female and juvenile
Blackcap 1 - adult female
Great-spotted Woodpecker 1 - juvenile male
Goldcrest 1 - adult male
Robin 5 - 1 all new juveniles, 1 retrap adult
Short-toed Treecreeper 1 - adult female
Yellowhammer 1 - splendid adult male
Willow Warbler 1 - juvenile

15 birds in total..

Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella), adult male

Goldcrest (Regulus regulus), adult male

Short-toed Treecreeper (Certhia brachydactyla), female; this could be a 2cy because of the pattern (and now it's moulting, the large contrast) of the (brown/worn) old outer primary coverts. You can see the old ones have a narrow buffy/white shaft on the outer web, whilst the new ones have a dark buffy tip (adult type pc?) on the point of the primary coverts. I know that this feature can be used for ageing Treecreepers (Certhia familiaris), but I'm not sure it can be of use with the brachydactyla. This year and last year I took a look at the juvenile Short-toed Treecreepers and I found out that some juveniles had a smaller buffy tip (adult type?) but on the outer pc's this tip was sometimes somewhat larger. Others had more extensive buffy/white colouring , like the bird above. Here are just two random pic's to illustrate

Juvenile Short-toed Treecreeper from last year; note the outer primary coverts

Juvenile Short-toed Treecreeper from this year; note the smal(ler) tips on the pc's, the outer ones as you can see, somewhat larger. This is maybe not the best example as the wing is closed.. 

I don't know what experience/knowlegde other ringers have on this subject but I'm interested to know!