Part of the flock of Common Sandpipers that rounded the Bill tip this morning; what's up with the amazing amount of variation in the strength of their wing-bars - is that usual? © Pete Saunders:
Save to say that they involved the authorized thieving of telecommunications materials and a well-timed call of nature, the sequence of events that led to the entirely serendipitous discovery of today's Crossbill are too peculiar to repeat for the upstanding citizens who drop in our blog; however, they show that you just never know when you're going to jam in on something interesting - and, just in case, it always pays to have a camera in the car. With so many coastal Crossbills about we've been perplexed as to why we haven't been getting any at Portland - hopefully, today's bird will prove to be the first of plenty more © Martin Cade:
Recently fledged baby Whitethroats are a staple in the mist-nets at this time of year...
...and they have tails that look like this - thinnish and mainly grey-brown feathers with sullied, brown-washed outer feathers and no white tips to the penultimate feathers:
If anything, one of this morning's youngsters looked fluffier and even younger than the example above; however, it had a short, still-growing tail that was entirely adult pattern - broader, blacker feathers with pure white wedges on the outer feathers and broad white tips to the penultimate feathers. This bird had obviously lost its first juvenile pattern tail after some mishap or other and, even at this young age, is growing a new, adult pattern tail (this is seemingly a cast-iron rule in cases like this: the replacement feathers will be of adult pattern). Since they invite mis-ageing, birds like this can be quite a pitfall for ringers and field birders alike! © Martin Cade:
At least in terms of scarcities, migrant lepidoptera interest continued to dwindle away, although the moth-traps did produce the highest counts of the year of both Silver Y and Dark Sword Grass. By day, there also looked to be quite an increase in Red Admirals and Painted Ladys, the majority of which looked to be sparklingly fresh - might these be the progeny of the arrivals earlier in the summer? © Jodie Henderson:
