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Black Redstart age (1 Viewer)

Can't tell between female and immature for this pic - it is possible in the hand with birds trapped for ringing, but not realistically in the field. Adult females in fresh plumage also have palish fringes like this, as well as juvs.

If trapped, check the tip of the 6th tail feather; ± uniform in adult females, with a darker tip in 1st winters (Svensson, ID guide to European Passerines)

Michael
 
Michael Frankis said:
Can't tell between female and immature for this pic - it is possible in the hand with birds trapped for ringing, but not realistically in the field. Adult females in fresh plumage also have palish fringes like this, as well as juvs.

If trapped, check the tip of the 6th tail feather; ± uniform in adult females, with a darker tip in 1st winters (Svensson, ID guide to European Passerines)

Michael

Not had much to do with ringing so wouldn't know which was the 6th feather. I am guessing it isn't visible here:
 

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Hi Brian,

I did see that dark tip on the one of the feathers there. Trouble is, the tail isn't fanned, so I can't say if it is the 6th feather or not (Svensson is quite specific that it has to be the 6th!).

Michael
 
I think T6 would be the outermost...and no not in view.

However, its hard to tell for sure in the photos, but it looks to me like the inner 2 greater coverts on the right wing are different toned to the rest. If that was the case then the odds would be on 1st winter male.
 
Sorry if this a stupid question then, but what age is this? It didn't seem bright enough to be an adult male at the time. It was taken yesterday. I have other views if they would be helpful.

Stephen.
 

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Hi Stephen,

Yours is a first-winter male, bright individual. Again from Svensson, young males are quite variable, some are all but indistinguishable from females, but others are brighter, like this with an obvious pale wing panel and some black on the upper breast. I guess it depends on the rate at which they mature.

Michael
 
Svensson also states that females never show a wing panel. However, to my eye, both my pics and Jane's bird appear to show a distinct pale panel in the wing formed by broad pale outer feather fringes. I thought the greater coverts on my bird look rather uniform but if not would be another pointer to a first winter.

Thanks for all the comments. I guess this one would have needed to be in the hand to be sure.
 
With ref. to Stephen's bird, the combination of adult male like body plumage (esp the black on the chin and throat) but female/ imm type wings makes this bird an example of the rather rare 'paradoxus' morph and consequently a first-winter male. If available more pics of this bird might be useful to confirm this view.

I tend to agree with Jane that there is probably a moult contrast in the greater coverts on Brian's bird (though the lengths of all the GC's look strangely similar) which would make it a first-winter of indeterminate sex.

Spud
 
Spud,

Four more images of the bird are attached, they aren't nearly as good quality but should hopefully help.

Stephen.
 

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Thanks Stephen,

That seems to confirm the suspicion that it's a 'paradoxus' morph, I know of no other explanation for a bird showing some adult male like features in the body plumage but not in the wings.

Spud
 
Hi Spud,

Seems to me to show quite obvious pale, if not actually white, fringes to the secondaries. Less than an adult male, true enough, but so is the amount of black on the throat & breast less than an adult male. A roughly equal 'degree of maleness' in both. Why's it not just a fairly normal 1st-w male?

Michael
 
Hi Michael,

'Normal' 1st-w males ('cairii' morph) show no adult male like plumage features at all and look just like females, once the post-juvenile moult is completed in late summer they do not moult again until the following summer so adult features cannot emerge as the autumn progresses.

Regarding the wing panel, this looks well within the normal range of variation in fem/ imm to me though it is a characteristic of some 'paradoxus' morph birds to show a slightly more adult male-like panel than other age and sex groups, however this is only a result of any replaced juvenile tertials showing whiter fringes than would normally be the case - no secondaries should be replaced in the post-juvenile moult.

For the sake of completeness, ad males in autumn are essentially similar to spring birds (though with some pale fringing to the body feathers), they show black greater coverts and a dramatic pure white wing panel. I'd imagine that by next spring Stephen's bird (which in body plumage is not far removed from a typical autumn ad male) will have worn away some of the pale fringes on the underparts and will appear even more adult like in body plumage. By then though its wings will be even more brown and dingy and readily distinguishable from those of an adult male

Spud
 
Hi Stephen,

Svensson is the most ready source of such info, I'd caution against placing much reliance on the plates in BWP as these certainly don't tally with my experience in the field or museum. Note too that the Collins guide refers to 1st-summer males when in reality this plumage does not exist - Black Reds (like most other chats) do not have partial moult in late winter or spring and any changes in appearance then are the result of wear. That said, the adult like variant '1st-sum' male in Collins is in fact a 'paradoxus' morph though not labelled as such.

Spud
 
I was sufficiently enthused by this discussion to follow up another 1WM which spent three months in Lancs a few years back. The feedback on the identification of this bird was:

"We were lucky with that bird, because although it looked very 'female'
on arrival (I recall that it had a brighter white wing patch than your
bird, though), by its departure in January it had acquired a distinctly
blackish look to the throat and lores, hence our conclusion that it was
a first-w male."

Thought this might be of interest.

Regards,

Stephen.
 
Michael Frankis said:
Hi Stephen,

Yours is a first-winter male, bright individual. Again from Svensson, young males are quite variable, some are all but indistinguishable from females, but others are brighter, like this with an obvious pale wing panel and some black on the upper breast. I guess it depends on the rate at which they mature.

Michael

First-winter male, looks OK, but I'd suggest using the term sub-adult. Females and SA's are hard to seperate on views alone as stated in previous posts.

IH
 
Why sub-adult?. Black Reds are either juveniles (until late summer of the year they hatch), first-winters (from late summer through to the summer of the second calendar year) or adults - there are no intermediate plumage stages that would justify a term such as sub adult. The only justification for the use of the term sub-adult would be to overcome the anomaly of the fact that first-winter plumage is worn throughout the whole of the birds first-full summer of life, i.e. it's second calendar year. To overcome this anomaly the term 'immature' would be better and would not imply any intermediate plumage stage such as that suggested by the term sub-adult.

Spud
 
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