Billinge: 11th & 13th November

It is that time of year when ringing forays on the hill go all country music which is OK if you don't mind slim pickings. The first hour or so usually manages to provide a few birds but the capture rate usually tapers off quite quickly and the remainder of the session often feels like there would be plenty of time to start learning to play the banjo. While the quantity and variety may not be there a degree of quality usually is and there is always a chance that something really interesting or unusual may turn up.

A fog hampered session on the 11th produce a total of 18 birds - 4 Goldrest, 3 Blackbird, a Fieldfare, 7 Redwing and 3 Chaffinches. Two of the Blackbirds were quite long-winged so likely to be of continental origin as were a couple of the Chaffinches. There haven't been as many Fieldfare passing through this autumn so catching one was a real bonus.

Adult female Fieldfare 11/11/17

A session in clearer conditions on the 13th also resulted in a total of 18 birds being caught - 5 Goldcrest, 12 Redwing and a retrap Robin. The stand out highlight of this session was an Icelandic Redwing which stood out as looking different even as I approached it in the net.

Previous posts with images of 'coburni' types have always attracted a lot of views and there is clearly a lot of interest in the identification of Icelandic Redwings. Some people think wing length is the key to identifying Icelandic birds but there is a huge overlap between 'coburni' and and the nominate race 'iliacus' and wing length will only identify the biggest 'coburni'. Icelandic birds are generally darker and more heavily marked than the nominate race and while that can lead to a bias of only identifying the darkest and most heavily marked birds it will identify more birds than wing length. Anyway you can decide for yourself by looking at the images below and the previous ones I have posted here and here.

Note the brownish-buff washed ground colour to the heavily marked flanks and undertail coverts.

Obviously the Icelandic bird is on the left with a nominate 'iliacus' on the right for comparison.

By the way there is a country music outfit called Slim Pickins and there is another band called Slim Pickings although they play different genre altogether, not that either is really my cup of tea.