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| Turtle Dove, Colyton, 12/10/16 (Copyright T D Wright) |
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| Turtle Dove, Colyton, 12/10/16 (Copyright T D Wright) |
After finally breaking my
Turtle Dove duck last Wednesday I was amazed to see another along Cownhayne farm track yesterday. A different bird I reckon as its tertials were much more rufous than last week's 1st Winter bird so at a more advanced stage although still classed as 1st Winter due to pale fringing on scapulars/wing-coverts I think. Today from Tower Hide I was looking at a Common Snipe way upriver when it was joined by a
Jack Snipe. Unusual to see one bobbing up 'n' down on the Axe as usually only seen during midwinter organised flushes for recording/year-listing! Nice comparison beside Common was not an everyday sight either; probably just arrived on the back of these prolonged Easterly & North-Easterly winds. The
Ruff and
Grey Plover were still about as were 7
Common Gulls. Goldcrests & Chiffchaffs are more in evidence now including a weird Chiff which called 'stirrup' instead of 'hooeet'!
Hi Tim. Great to see you had another Turtle Dove, although looking closely at all your pics (and Phil's) they have got to be the same bird as the moult and the state of the scapular feathers are identical, could the appearance of brighter tertials just be down to viewing conditions? In particular look at the lower median coverts, and that almost pale tramline in the upper scaps separating two areas of lovely fresh orange and black feathers. Hopefully I will see this bird tomorrow, only ever had one here! Cheers, Steve.
ReplyDeleteYes I've been thinking about what I said and I forgot to mention on my last post that the Primaries are also very rufous on Bird 2, whereas Bird 1 appeared to have plain grey Primaries. Of course, my photo of Bird 1 was phonescoped and I've not seen Phil's pics of it.Where can I access those?
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