Dunnocks & Long-tailed Tits.

With a family get together in Somerset planned for the weekend there wasn't any real opportunity to do much birding. Finishing work by 13.00 on Friday was a bonus and meant I was able to put a mist net up in the garden for an hour or so before it got dark. We've been gettign a party of Long-tailed Tits passing through a couple of times a day but so far I'd only managed to catch and ring one. I'm particularly interested in these birds as the first two controls I caught in the garden were both 'Lotti's' caught in the same week! Since then I've caught a few ringed in previous years so was interested in seeing if any of the current group were ringed or if it's the same group passing through daily.

Thew first bird caught was a young Dunnock that I'd ringed earlier this spring and could still be readily aged by its muddy brown iris.

As with a number of species Dunnock eye colour gets darker with age although this isn't always a foolproof criteria for ageing them. This one was a known age retrap and had a muddy brown eye so aging was straight forward.

Compare the eye colour to the adult I ringed in the spring:

Another interesting bird was this Blue Tit showing a broken 2nd primary - yet another bird with poor quality feathers. This has been something of a feature this year with other ringers commenting on the same thing.

I did manage to catch  10 Long-tailed Tits including 1 retrap - a bird  I ringed last month! Interestingly there was also a retrap Coal Tit associating with the Lotti's. A scarce bird in my garden but I've ringed a few this autumn although I haven't seen one for a few weeks. Hopefully they might pull in a wandering Yellow-browed Warbler over the winter!

Garage ringing station