Sunday November 12 - Morton Bagot

 Yesterday dawned sunny and frosty. I knew the ringers would be on site, but being a creature of habit I decided to stick to the original plan of trudging around the patch on a gloomy damp Sunday morning.

Mistake.

The ringers had had a fabulous (though exhausting) time catching Redpolls that Saturday morning, and it wasn't long before I received a rather gripping photograph. In the midst of a haul of 120 Redpolls, one bird had stood out. Larger and heavier than the Lesser Redpolls which had been attracted to the lure of taped-recorder Redpoll twitter, was a Mealy Redpoll.

Mealy Redpoll

It was accompanied by the question "what do you think?" What I thought was why hadn't I joined them? Further photos and biometrics saying that the wing length was 75mm confirmed its identity beyond all doubt.

Here it is again

Some time later Tony shared another photograph. It showed a second bird, trapped in the same net at the same time. This time the wing length was only 72.5mm, and the bird was browner. Nevertheless the rump was spectacularly pale and heavily streaked, and it was still a little larger than the other Redpolls in the catch. My feeling was that it was another Mealy Redpoll, but I decided to share the details with Andy Warr (while Tony enlisted the opinion of Adam Archer) and both agreed it was an immature female Mealy.

The second Mealy Redpoll

So these Redpolls are currently treated as a race of the continental Common Redpoll (although I prefer the old name Mealy Redpoll). All the rest Tony and Leigh had caught were the closely related British and western European Lesser Redpoll. They can be tricky to separate in the field as the feathers wear paler as winter progresses, and Lesser Redpolls also show some pale in the rump. Female Mealies can look quite brown and not as large and pale as male Mealies. It can get quite nightmarish as Dave and I found at Morton Bagot in 2016 when we had another flock of Redpolls which probably included some Mealies. It's great having ringers on site who can deliver biometrics to back up any field observations.

So that was the day I missed.

Sunday was a different kettle of fish. In a morning of persistent drizzle Dave resisted the urge to bale out, and we were joined by Tony who fancied walking round with us. I forgot to remind him of the dress code, and I have to say that his idea of camouflaged birding gear was somewhat eccentric.

Dave and Tony

Any prospect of studying Redpolls in the field went out of the window as we only saw calling fly-overs. But the day still produced enough to keep us cheerful.

After glimpsing the Barn Owl peeping out of its tree crevice we decided to try for Jack Snipe. This involves an unfortunate level of disturbance, but successfully produced three Jack Snipe and a few Common Snipe. We were also distracted by the first of at least three Stonechats and by a Red Kite which circled the field before landing in a distant tree.

Red Kite

We moved on towards the flash field and found it contained only the usual Mallard, Teal, Common Snipe, and two Shovelers.

The rain persisted, so my camera didn't get much use. Nevertheless we pronounced it a decent morning's birding.

PS: A ringing recovery of one of the Lesser Redpolls caught on October 15 2023 has revealed that it had moved to Icklesham in East Sussex by November 3 2023. It seems very likely that it would then have crossed the channel heading for France or even Spain.