**UPDATED ON 31st OCTOBER**
After an uneventful couple of hours on patch this morning (although the Rose-coloured Starling was seen by others at both ends of the day at Colyford Common), with today being a bonus day off I managed to convince the family on a trip to Budleigh...
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| To be truthful as they both love nature and Budleigh they didn't need any convincing at all! |
I was keen to seen the two Snow Buntings that have been present on the beach here for a couple of weeks, although have been delaying my visit due to their popularity (as they should be mind!). I will always try and avoid the crowds if I can.
Upon arrival at the beach early afternoon there were indeed no crowds. However there were also no obvious Snow Buntings! We wandered along the lower path, but at one stage as I was looking back to see where Harry had got to, the Snow Buntings were right there practically underneath me - I must have walked right past them! They began shuffling towards me, so I sat down where I was and proceeded to have the most enjoyable half-hour with them. They spent the whole time feeding right besides me, sometimes just within a couple of feet of my feet! Thanks to Jess for this pic...
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| You can't actually see the birds here but they're in that weedy strip |
And what fine birds they were...
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| They always remained together |
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| ...but would never both look the right way at the same time! |
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| This was the paler of the two birds |
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| And this the darker, which seemed to be slightly more confident as it would always come the closest to me out of the two of them |
Whenever I see Snow Buntings I am always fascinated at the variation in plumage within the species, almost like no two ever look truly the same. And I think it is because of this that I love trying to figure out the age and sex of any Snow Buntings I come across, so that's what I tried to do!
Before I do delve deeper into these two birds, please enjoy this little video of them...
Ok, so let's look at the two birds a little closer...
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| And from this point on they will be known as pale bird (left) and dark bird (right)! |
Sexing: Quite straightforward, or so I thought! The amount of white in the wing of both birds, visible even on the closed wing, looked vast enough to say they were males. The dark bird did the right thing and allowed me to snap his open wing, exposing all his lovely white feathers...
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| Except the black in the primaries, primary coverts, alula and tips of the outermost secondary or two, all white!! |
The pale bird, although showing overall less white in the open wing, still appeared to show enough white to be a male for me. However some excellent photos posted on Twitter by @sharkeee after I first wrote this post have made me think again. It does show lots of white on the median and lesser coverts, as well as white on both sides of the feather shafts of the inner most one or two primary coverts, the rest of which are all dark (ok for a first-winter male) but the overall amount of white in the primaries is more what you would expect with a female. Hopefully I will get permission to use @sharkeee's photos here and update this post further. So pale bird is a slight question mark for me, although am still thinking male.
Subspecies: I am confident that both these birds are P. n. insulae. This is the race of Snow Bunting that breeds in Iceland (and the small population that breed in Scotland). P. n. nivalis is the other main race, breeding across Greenland and Arctic Europe and North America. One of the main differences is that males of insulae have complete black rumps in breeding plumage. This can be hard to spot in autumn, but underneath the beautiful rusty coloured rump feathers of both these birds were hints of black...
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| The rusty colour will wear off as the winter progresses exposing the black feather centres |
Ageing: This is where what little confidence I had ends. Although I am fairly certain the pale bird is a first-winter. It has nice pointy and worn-tipped tail feathers, and the outer tertial is fairly worn and doesn't look all that rounded to me...
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| The best photo I got of the pale birds flight and tail feathers |
The one I really couldn't decide upon is the dark bird, I kept flipping between adult (or at least 2cy in age) and first-winter, but I think I have landed on an answer...
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| I really felt like this bird shows more rounded tail and tertials, as well as less and even wear on all feather tips. I also cannot see any moult limit anywhere |
The main reason I thought the dark bird might have been an adult was the white and black in the wing. If you scroll back up and look at the upperwing shot again there is just so much clean white, with all the black bits clearly defined and solidly black. I would expect more diffuse black and less clear white if this was a younger bird maybe? Or so I thought... The black tips to the outer most secondaries, and thick black primary covert tips (both visible on my open wing shot) probably shouldn't be there if it were an adult bird, these should be pure white, so am going to land on first-winter for this one too.
So no, I haven't worked them out at all really, especially that pale bird. But it was great fun trying, and what a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon watching, studying and photographing them, and then mulling over them in my head for the rest of the day.
To finish the post, here's some useful links when it comes to the finer details of Snow Buntings:
https://ringersdigiguide.ottenby.se/species/plectrophenax-nivalis/sexing/
https://www.birdguides.com/articles/identification/snow-bunting-photo-id-guide/
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