Things are very quiet now; we're not catching more than 50 birds a day. The Blue Tits have been replaced — admittedly in less-than-plague-proportion numbers — by these charming critters:
We caught 10 of them today, almost one-third of the entire total...
The base of the head feathers is actually dark so when the head feathers are raised, as they are here, some dark 'smudging' appears on the side of the head.
Not wishing to forget the Blue Tits all together just yet, we caught this bird today that showed an extremely interesting (“interesting”?) moult pattern.
The bird — a first-year male — had undergone what appears to be an extensive post-juvenile moult. All of the greater coverts, the carpal covert, alula feathers 1–3 and tertials 1–3 have been moulted — so far so normal. This bird had also moulted S6 on both wings — unusual but not completely mind-blowing. It also showed — hold onto your hats at this point — new adult-type primary coverts; PC6 and PC9... on both wings.
I've seen two birds this autumn that have shown a single new primary covert on one wing. While the primary coverts aren't the most exposed feather tract on a bird, it's been my assumption that these single asymmetrically new primary coverts were the result of regrowth following accidental loss. I've handled another bird that had moulted primary coverts on both wings but they were not symmetrical either; and besides, the bird was a bit messed up with a chunk of primaries missing from the right wing, so it was easy to blame the appearance of the adult-type feathers on accidental loss again (though I'm still not entirely sure I've managed to convince myself over that one). However, on today's bird it's very hard to dismiss the symmetrical feather replacement as accidental loss.
On a less geeky note, a Red-breasted Goose was found at Knösen yesterday and was still present this morning; we nipped up there in between net rounds to take a look (thanks to Josefina for providing the wheels).
The only other notable sighting from today was a Yellow-browed Warbler that showed down to a few metres in the park behind the observatory.
Yesterday we caught a few Goldcrests including this rather grey-headed individual (on the left — sorry for the shoddy photos; it was still pretty dark). The bill was also noticeably thicker than the buffier-headed bird; about one-third deeper at the base. From somewhere east of here?
In other news, a Wolf has been spotted on the peninsula.
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