Coal Tits and Goldcrests.

After the excitement of the Lewis trip and getting home very late I had a bit of a lie in! Until 11.00 am to be exact! I've never slept in that late before - even as a student. With no inclination to walk to far or exert myself in anyway I spent the rest of the afternoon doing some ringing in the garden and catching up on some admin. Surprisingly there were a few Coal Tits and Goldcrests around. One of the Goldcrests caught was this lovely 1st winter male.

All the Coal Tits were juveniles and aged as such by the moult contrast in the greater coverts. Coal Tits are unusual in that the adult type Greater coverts are actually shorter than the juvenile ones as can be seen in the photo below. The newer adult type are the inner darker ones and this bird has retained the outer 4 browner juvenile greater coverts.

I also caught this unfortunate male Chaffinch with scaly mite diseased legs. This is probably the worst case I've seen and birds like this are not ringed. It has been reported through the Garden Wildlife Health pages here.

Another good bird to see again was this smart looking fella 1st ringed as an adult in 2013.

The garden feeders aren't particularity busy as the weathers so mild a lot of birds are still  foraging for natural food. the finches are enjoying the sunflower hearts though & I'm continuing to catch small numbers of Gold finches and Greenfinches. Some of the juvenile Goldfinches have a very limited post juvenile moult and retain quite a few old greater coverts such as this bird below. Note the brown tipped juvenile greater coverts.

Another interesting bird was this Greenfinch that seemed to have undergone an asymmetric moult with primaries 6-8 being new and secondaries 1 & 2  also seemingly replaced.

A good little session culminating in this Bronze Shieldbug  - a new species for the garden!