HOUSE
1. 1st year Yellow-browed Warbler, probably female on biometrics, at least at the small end of the range. This birds had clearly been in the country for a good time and had been feeding fweel, it had a fat score of 5/5
2. 1st year Pallas Warbler. Again I'm assuming female on biometrics. It was truly tiny! There is a funny story to this bird. Caught at Filey, in the top scrub while everyone else...and I mean everyone else was out looking for a reported Gyr Falcon. I was doing a net round and came back to find that everyone had scarpered. This was a nice consolation., and the falcon turned out to be a Buzzard-sized Saker! The photo is a little dark, but it is quite the darkest of these little gems I've ever seen
4. Northern Wheatear, Greenland Race, it is indeed male, though probably 1st summer male, leucohoa. It was a monster bird, with a wing length longer than many Song Thrushes and a tarsus wider than than the ring-size it was supposed to take! A strange thing about Greenland Wheatears, they seem to be a great deal easier to catch than the European Birds. I don't know if they get excited by trees or something, but of the 15 or so Wheatears I've caught locally all have been definite or probable leucohoa. I find the first Wheatears that come in a barely larger than Redstarts...by early May some are starting to lookk bigger and browner mantled, and by late May all the birds going through are hulking great things like this one.