OK, its not a Red-flanked Bluetail, but its pretty decent.
Tony and Leigh managed to catch a Mealy Redpoll this morning, and have sent me some gripping photos. They also netted a Blackcap.
 |
| Mealy Redpoll - per Tony Kelly |
 |
| Mealy Redpoll - per Tony Kelly |
My decision to go there on Wednesday instead of Thursday is now looking pretty poor. Mind you, I probably walked past it oblivious of its presence.
In case anybody is wondering what a Mealy Redpoll is, you're not alone. For about half of my birding life, Lesser Redpoll was treated as the western European (mainly British) race of the Scandinavian Mealy Redpoll, so not a species. This meant we didn't have to care about them.
Then the taxonomists split them, and they became a species, confusingly calling the Scandinavian one the Common Redpoll. This created all kinds of problems. Quite apart from their similarity to Lesser Redpoll (they are bigger and paler), calling them Common Redpoll caused some birders to confuse the names with the British Lesser Redpoll, which is the common one in the UK.
Are you keeping up? It gets worse. I thought that in the last couple of years they had been considered for re-lumping. That could have meant we would be back to square one, and that they were just a race again. Frankly I'm not sure whether that happened though, and it may have survived as a species.
Dave and I did see a definite Mealy Redpoll here one November a few years ago, and it looked just like the bird pictured. However a few years later, with record numbers of Lesser Redpolls, I saw a bird or two which looked Mealy-like. Unfortunately Dave was never really convinced, and it is possible that feather wear which tends to affect all Redpolls later in the winter, may have been leading me astray.
 |
| Blackcap - per Tony Kelly |
Blackcaps on the other hand, are easy. A nice late record.
The full list was as follows:
No comments:
Post a Comment