A long awaited year-tick

This year I'm doing some sort of yearlist in my county (past few weeks less active) and this year the Red-backed Shrike was still a missing species on my list. They didn't occupy the Hoog Buurlosche Heide this year (at least, I did not see them) so I thought I would not be seeing this species this year in my county. A month ago however, a pair of Red-backed shrikes had been sighted near Vliegveld-Deelen some 20 kilometres away from Apeldoorn. Until today I did not have the oppurtunity (or did not feel like cycling 20 km) to visit this place (school etc). So this morning I went to Vliegveld Deelen with my father and immediatly after arrival I saw the bird perched in tree. That was an easy one! It was a nice male and showed well for a couple of minutes. Then it flew off and reappeared again after ten minutes. It was distant but through the telescope we had a good look. After this last view we went home again, and I had a new yearlist species!

Ringing @ Appletown

CES 9 today: not a hell lot of birds, 65 orso, hoped for more because the previous days good numbers of tits were caught at a few ringing sites. We had some cool birds such as a male Goldfinch and adult female Nuthatch
















Female Goldfinch would not have the red 'passing' the eye. In addition females don't have extensive yellow-coloured binnevlag (don't know the english translation.) in the primaries. Also in this time of year the broodpatch/cloaca is decisive for sexing (as with most other birds).

Ringing at Nijmegen

Went to Bram for two days and we ringed a couple of things including 65 Sand Martins:

Ad:

Juv: note the brownish edges on the greater and lesser coverts

An overall shot of an adult Sand Martin:

Furthermore:
Adult male Great-Spotted Woodpecker

Juv female Starling















Adult female Whitethroat: