The Dark Room

Monday 25 January 2021

Full fat

Opened up the net in the garden on Saturday morning for a nice morning session 8 Goldfinch (7 2cy & 1 Ad) plus Female Blackbird and a Female Starling was good but bird of the day was a full fat garden tick Egyptian Goose that flew over calling!

 

Male Goldfinch


3 comments:

  1. Why male? I thought the red had to join behind the eye to make it a male

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  2. Maybe hard to tell from this image but the red does past the eye by some way as Svensson and Demongin books state as a male but there is another glue in the image the black nasal hairs. What you can't see is how bright the birds plumage is/was and the black Lesser Coverts and with a wing length of 79mm all help to id this bird as a male. Hope this helps?

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  3. Sorry if my earlier comments were too sharp for you. I did a lot of work on sexual dimorphism in passerines and wrote the paper on sexing Skylarks in the hand. So a wing length of 79 in a Goldfinch means nothing unless it is combined with weight. The obvious example of this is in Humans. There are six foot women but they are rare, so a person's height is not fully indicative of sex. Hopefully you can understand why 'back up' sexual differences are generally useless in the field. I never wish to offend anyone, so please accept my apologies. I really want young Ringers to understand what they have in the hand, its a privillage after all. Best, Mike

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