The day dawned with a stiff northeasterly breeze and cloud that steadily ameliorated away to another gloriously warm day. Once again it was down to the nets to provide the potential quality of the day as the afternoon session produced a single bird - a very bright, pale-legged
Chiffchaff. Of course, we've been caught out before so caution is prudent but it looked to be a worthwhile candidate for an
Iberian Chiffchaff. Unfortunately the bird was a female so singing was out of the question and no amount of recording equipment could induce the bird to call upon release. Aside from this glimmer of excitement, a
Bonxie passed at sea and a single
Blackcap was in the Obs garden.
The afternoon Chiffchaff was a bright bird with a lot of yellow in the supercilium, a reduced under-eye crescent and a nice clean white belly...
...although even more interesting since this is supposed to be a good feature of first-summer Iberian Chiffchaffs was the evidence of moult in the flight feathers: this was a wee bit subtle since it's already mid-June so the whole tract of feathers was worn, but in comparison to the heavily worn inner primaries the outer primaries were noticeably darker and less worn; the outermost secondary was also conspicuously fresh and dark and so had the look of a more recently moulted feather than those around it © Martin Cade:
