Whinchats and waders

Day two ringing at Flommen and the drop in the wind helped to raise the total number of birds caught to just over 70 (totals online — click Ringing). The bulk of the total was Reed Warblers but we did catch a few Marsh Warblers (juvenile Marsh Warbler preliminary results: some are really obvious, others are definitely not), a Common Redstart, two Whinchat, three Tree Pipit, and an Icterine Warbler that had originally been ringed in the lighthouse garden.

The redstart was a 1cy male. You can see on the closed wing a slither of brighter blue-grey just as the greater coverts disappear under the scapulars. A closer view of this area on the spread wings reveals two moulted adult-type inner greater coverts. The bird will keep this moult limit in the greater coverts right through until it's first complete moult next autumn.

Both Whinchats were also 1cy birds, one male and one female. Here's the male:

And here's the female:

Whinchat is not a species I have handled much, at least not in autumn (sexing in spring is, of course, a lot more straightforward), so I'm not sure if the differences in e.g. the supercilium, the breast, the crown and the mantle (the latter not too apparent in these photos) are consistently this different between the sexes. Hopefully I'll get to handle a few more this autumn, so we'll see. I'll say something more about proven ways of sexing (and ageing) the species in a day or two.

By far the highlight of the morning, though, was a 2cy male Pallid Harrier that flew over our heads as we were doing a net round.

In the evening, I joined Måns at Nabben for some night-time wader ringing. We caught a nice selection, 19 individuals of 8 species: Common Shelduck (1), Common Teal (1), Knot (4), Sanderling (3), Dunlin (5), Bar-tailed Godwit (1), Redshank (3), and Common Tern (1).