Wednesday, March 12, 2014

9th March

A sightly less slow morning on the patch (compared to last weekend produced better numbers of common winterers including three Thick-billed Warblers, three Yellow-browed Warblers, two Brown Shrikes,  two Asian Brown Flycatchers and a couple of Taiga Flys. Many birds are still in some stage of prenuptial moult, so looking quite scruffy.

I spent a while chasing Pond Herons to document the various stages of moult that birds are currently in.  A few examples are included below:

Bird 1: small areas of maroon suggest this is a Chinese PH

Bird 1: dark coverts and primary shafts suggest it's a 2CY

Bird 1: tail seems pretty clean, but dark primary shafts (& tips) obvious here

Bird 2: I think this is going to turn into a bright Javan PH in breeding plum

Bird 2

the colour of Bird 2 is closer to this Javan (from April 2011)

compare Bird 2 with this Chinese PH photographed a few seconds earlier

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