Redpoll redux

Way back in the mists of 2011, we ringed a shed-load of Lesser Redpolls up on the edge of the moors. Somewhere around 250 of them over the course of the autumn. OK, it's hardly the stuff to make an observatory staff quake in their boots, but for our first full season at the site, it was something pretty special. Within that mix were a couple of local retraps - all from round about the moor's edge and none of them from more than 10km away - and that seemed to be about that... Then, the following spring, we received news that one of our birds had been caught in someone's house in northern France - always an exciting moment when one of 'your' birds is traced to another country, and this autumn we've discovered that another of 'our' class of 2011 has been recaptured twice by a local ringer on the south-west side of the moor, this time a bird on a breeding territory. So we know that some of the birds we ringed that autumn most likely came from the local area, whilst some presumably originated elsewhere in Europe...

Since that autumn, we've caught rather fewer Lesser Redpolls: in fact fewer than 10 each season. None of those we caught in 2011 have been recaptured on site either, though there are generally a few Lesser Redpoll around throughout the year.

Then, a couple of weekends back, we caught half a dozen Lesser Redpolls on one day... and this:

It's big...

...it's got a socking great pale rump...

...(just like the linked blog above, you can see some wear on the tail and primary tips which help age it as a bird of the year)...

...no brown on the flanks...

....it's grey (this photo © Judith Read)...

...it's still got no brown on the flanks (this photo © Judith Read)...

...and it's got white wing-bars (this photo also © Judith Read). Note also the two visible retained juvenile greater coverts. Award yourself an extra mark if you didn't have to look the feather tract up.

'It' is, of course (roll eyes and sigh, go on) a Common Redpoll, Carduelis flammea - one of those northern birds so controversially (?) split out during some taxonomic reorganisation back in the late 90s-early 2000s. You can see most everything you ought to want to to identify this one as a Common: white wing-bars, pale rump, cold brown and grey tones overall. You can't hear it, because I haven't got the kit to record it, but rest assured it even sounded a little deeper-voiced when it called.

The description's in the post to the county recorder...

A toast to Redpolls

A short blog to share some pictures of some Lesser Redpolls we've been catching at our Dartmoor site.

Tail and primary tips of a bird born this year

Tail and primary tips of an adult

 

You can see from the pictures above how much fun it can be to age these birds: in effect you're looking for evidence of wear on the tips of the tail feathers and primaries. You'll also notice the broad fringes and darker base-colour of the adult bird's feathers: this is basically due to the better quality feathers that adults grow, compared with the feathers that young birds grow in the nest.

A nice crisp adult (perhaps a female) with a good hint of a pale rump.

A particularly dark young bird with very pale retained greater coverts (the white feather-tips across the wing)

A full-on adult male, ringed in 2010 at a nearby site by a friend, and retrapped by us recently. Not the best picture, unfortunately, but he was pink everywhere: cheeks, chin, rump, breast, flanks... smart.