Wednesday 30 October 2013

Greenland Wheatear

Louise phoned me at work and then mentioned she'd just seen a rather interesting looking wheatear down by our ponies. I asked her to nip back with my camera and blast off a few shots so that we could nail the id, and to leave the camera in the tack room. The ponies are in fields about half a mile from work so at lunchtime I nipped down there for a quick look. I found the wheatear in about two minutes and the photos certainly nail the id.





Pot bellied, short-looking tail, long primaries, rich red/brown breast extending to the flanks and towards the lower belly, black tail with black extending to a broad black band, strong supercilium, rich brown in the mantle and back, clearly showing six primary tips, the seventh is just (I think) peeking out from the tertials. Anyone disagree? Any other useful criteria?

Top three photos Louise Forsyth

2 comments:

Nick Carter said...

No disagreement from here mate, looks a belter!

Alastair said...

I'm a tad confused about the primary tips feature as having looked carefully at the bottom photo and at Svensson the tip of the wing in view is made up of two primary tips (well actually three but P2 is hidden under P3 and P4 I think) and then the obvious five other tips, I'm not so that anything really is peaking out from under the tertials. So what are we supposed to count, the tip, which is very hard to see, as two, and then the next five? Mmmmm think I need to look at some more photos of autumn birds that are not Greenland race.