Sunday 24 March 2013

Chiff central

A quick post to display some of the photos from yesterday's ringing session (and one from the 17th Feb). In total an amazing 73 Chiffchaff were caught in the PC World drain, Poole, of which  68 were new (incl tristis), 4 were re-trapped from previous visits and 1 was a control.

This is what we certainly believe to be a tristis


tristis

This next bird was caught on the 17th Feb and was a retrap having originally been trapped here in 2009. Could it be a tristis? Not heard to call and quite a bit of yellow below but other features look good.



tristis-type

I saw the next bird in the field yesterday before we caught it and it certainly looked interesting but it's not a bird I had seen previously this winter. In the hand it called twice, a fairly typical Chiffy "huet" but sadly it wouldn't call again when I had the recorder ready so no sonograms unfortunately.



Another tristis-type

This last bird is not a tristis-type but was quite a striking individual
Chiffchaff


Lastly here's a standard collybita


collybita

2 comments:

  1. Hi Marcus,
    I used to help out our local ringer, we caught lots of Chiffies, everyone of them was different!! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. There really was an amazing array of plumages and moult stages on Saturday. I know it's not always possible to label some birds but it's fun trying and I'm not one for just accepting what some individuals have to say on the species complex - there's still loads to learn.

    ReplyDelete