Six birds, six species...

My garden may not generate large numbers of birds, but what I love about ringing in it is the variety it produces. This morning’s efforts saw only six birds fail to miss the nets (seven if you include the song thrush that escaped before it could be extracted…grrr!). One cheeky greenfinch even tried to land on the top shelf string but found it too unstable to hold his weight! Unfortunately, he flew off rather than fall into the nets.

First up this morning was a first year robin, followed by a first year male goldfinch sporting worn primaries and tail feathers with many of the white tips abraded. The wing shows a clear colour contrast between the moulted greater coverts and the unmoulted outer-most greater covert, primary coverts and alula.

Red extending behind the eye and dark nose hairs = male

White tips abraded off primaries, 1 ogc, colour contrast between
moutled and unmoulted feathers

Abraded tail feathers

Next up was a male house sparrow. My back garden has had over 30 house sparrows in and around it in recent days and they are still slowly trickling into the nets. I have ringed twelve individuals (and re-trapped one of them) in the time (almost a month) that I have been ringing in the garden. Still a few to catch then!

The fourth bird into the nets was a new species for the garden – a reed bunting. The garden backs onto allotments and beyond that, arable fields so I was not too surprised to see a reed bunting in the nets. The slightly surprising thing for me with this bird was that it was still in winter plumage; I have seen so many male reed buntings recently that are already in their full summer finery.

I am afraid to say that I copped out of ageing this one. I was erring towards putting it down as an adult on the quality of the tertials and the condition of the primaries but I wasn’t convinced the tail was a full adult tail. Svensson mentions eye colour for this species (although I have never used that as a criteria before) and this one definitely had a brown rather than a grey iris (indicating adult) but I wasn’t sure enough to 6 it.

Reed bunting (from top) - male, winter plumage head pattern
(note brown iris), little wear on primaries, nice tertials and
(for me) an inconclusive tail shape.

The last two birds of the morning were a first year male great tit and a first year female blackbird with a large brood patch. When the morning became dull and overcast, the nets were much more productive. I know I wouldn’t be popular with the neighbours for wishing this but I do wish it was a little less sunny and breezy here on mornings when I want to put the nets up!

Full catch for the morning (all new birds) was: robin - 1, goldfinch – 1, house sparrow – 1, reed bunting – 1, great tit – 1, blackbird – 1.

Ruth