Sunday January 18

A cold but sunny morning. All water courses were frozen. As I waited for Dave to arrive my last "soft" year-tick flew into view. Two Collared Doves appeared and posed on wires. They seem to be a little less common than they used to be here.

Collared Dove

Dave arrived and we started our circuit. Today was to prove a particularly interesting one, but there was no sign that things were to hot up as we scanned the Tawny Owl tree without success. The two Stonechats were still present, the male having lost its tail since last week, but that was the pinnacle of our success until Dave looked behind us, into the sun, and told me he could see the Barn Owl. Sure enough, it was back in the same pollarded willow I had seen it in at the end of last year. We walked up the slope to get a more favourable aspect, and I duly took a record shot.

Barn Owl

 At this point Dave suffered a major blow. His phone rang and he found he was going to have to head to work as the equipment in his lab had fused for the second Sunday running.

So I continued the circuit alone, seeing nothing very much until I returned to where my car was parked. In the birches above it were three small birds. They were Redpolls and two of them were clearly Lesser Redpolls.

Notice anything odd?

The third bird, however, was noticeably paler. Definitely worth a second look. Could it be a Mealy Redpoll? The Mealy Redpoll, boringly renamed Common Redpoll, is definitely not common at all. It used to be the Scandinavian race of Lesser Redpoll until it was "split" a few years ago, giving birders a tick and a headache simultaneously. They are not always easy to ID because both they and Lessers vary in plumage and size according to age, time of year, and sex. They should be a little larger than Lesser, particularly the males.

Mealy and Lesser Redpolls

 This one was only fractionally bigger, so perhaps a female. The next feature to look for is the general frostiness of the plumage, and I certainly felt it was the palest of the three. After that you have to zoom in on individual features to build up your case. The best feature should be the rump colour, which is pale grey and streaked black, not fawn brown and streaked as in Lesser. The problem is that they are not keen to show you their rumps. But the tantalising views I got looked promising.

You can just see that the rump is pale and streaked

Other good features are that the flanks are whiter than in Lesser, with dark streaks standing out, and also that the greater covert wing bar is often all white. In Lessers the flanks are usually buff, and the wing bar has some buff in it.

This shot shows the flanks and wing-bar well

Another feature to look at in Redpolls is the undertail covert pattern. These are helpful if you are trying to ID an Arctic Redpoll, but I'm not sure how useful they are for separating Mealy from Lesser.

One streak on the longest undertail covert and single streaks on the next two

The mantle and scapulars were mainly brown with black streaks, but the centre of the mantle contained whitish tramlines. I would have been happier if the mantle had been paler, but Mealies do vary. After all this careful analysis I have convinced myself it is indeed a Mealy Redpoll sp.

Also, was I wearing my lucky socks? Well no I wasn't, so that's that theory up the spout.

Postscript: I have been reading as many articles as I can find hoping to firm up my thoughts, and if anything they raised more concerns. I've spoken to Dave who agreed it looked an interesting bird, but wondered if the mantle was pale enough. I was also thinking about this, and also about whether the head is pale enough. I took loads of photos of it, and am adding one to this post which gives a further impression of its head colour.

The head looks a better fit in this one; i.e. grey.

I still am no longer sure I think it is a Mealy, but if its a Lesser then its a very extreme one.