Mega-day syndrome

I don't want to suggest we were sat around twiddling out thumbs this morning, but we certainly had plenty of time on our hands. After several days with 1000s of birds, a morning with 'just' 192 (totals online — click Ringing) is really quite relaxing. We had plenty of time for a close look at the birds we were handling, time for photographs, and still we were never late for the next net round. 

We're catching a few Coal Tits each day now; the nominate grey-backed race — lovely little birds. Perhaps it's my imagination, but I'm sure these birds show longer crown feathers than British birds; the raised feathers, rather than simply giving the bird a peaked crown, form a small crest.

This 1cy bird, sexed as a male (broad solid black centres to the lesser coverts) has left two greater coverts unmoulted.

...while this unsexed 1cy bird has left four umoulted. Tits are one of the few birds where the juvenile greater coverts are considerably longer than adult-type greater coverts — especially obvious on this bird.

This 1cy female Great Tit has moulted all of its greater coverts; the moult limit lies elsewhere in the wing: in the alula (A1 is moulted, A2 & A3 are juvenile) and in the tertials (T1 & T2 are new, T3 is juvenile); the primaries, secondaries and primary coverts are all juvenile.

This 2+cy female Great Tit shows a single generation of adult wing feathers.

Finally, what appear to be two different subspecies of Chiffchaff — collybita:

And abietinus:

Both 1cy birds. Photos taken with a flash but using the same settings so they should at least be comparable.