blackbird’s whiskers…

Day 284 #365DaysWild

Garden bird ringing today. We assist our pal Rich. He’s the trained one..

British Summer Time has arrived. The clocks ‘spring forward’ and in fog, nets up before dawn. 

Lots of blue tits. Dunnocks. Great tits. Long-tailed tits. A chiffchaff. Robins. A song thrush. Blackbirds. A good session with a number of birds being caught again, allowing us to monitor the age of our garden birds before sending the records to the British Trust for Ornithology. Forty in total.

Today’s notebook entries.

Todays wren had been first ringed by us in 2021 and so, at three years of age, was quite old for a tiny bird.

This time we didn’t catch the garden faithful such as wood pigeon, stock dove, goldfinch or coal tit. Winter migrant Siskin buzzed at us from the conifers above. Summer migrant blackcaps arrived last week and are sharing snatches of song. They stayed away too.

A birds wing feathers
help to age a bird

A special part of bird ringing is seeing the birds in the hand and marvelling at the detail of their feathering or eye colour.

Today, I was specially fascinated by the whiskers around a male blackbirds beak. They’re called rictal bristles I’m told…

I’m guessing some sensory function.

Or perhaps like my facial hair, it is used for collecting dust & fluff.