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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darryl" data-source="post: 1187494" data-attributes="member: 48633">Redpolls schmedpollsAfternoon Luke, afternoon Changer400,First up, interesting bird, nice pics.  I'm going to sound a note of caution here though, crack open your Svensson's and on page 299 you will find the following wisdom handed down by 'He who knows all': "Plumage differences between ssp. flammea, cabaret and rostrata are generally rather slight and not always diagnostic when holding a single specimen in the hand. Therefore, structure and size always important for a reliable determination."If you take comparable age/sex classes, on average flammea is roughly 5-10% larger/heavier than cabaret.  The photos allow us to be pretty confident that the bird in question is an adult (i.e. 3rd cal. year or older) female and the bird sitting adjacent to it, in the third pic in post 17, is a 2nd cal. year female (nice comparison of TF shape in this pic).  The age difference is unimportant at this stage (the 2nd cal. year bird is as big as it will get) so, as near as damn it, we are comparing like with like.  As long as we are in agreement thus far (and as long as the third pic in post 17 gives a fair impression of the bird), I shouldn't be the only person thinking "it should be looking a bit bigger to be a classic flammea".Plumage-wise it looks pretty good for flammea, structurally it looks like a cabaret (I don't see the 'bull-neck' or 'large bill' alluded to in post 4).  If this was in a mixed flock of cabaret and flammea on the east coast, I'm sure it would go on the flammea count but I'd want one that ticks all the boxes to be super-confident of slipping it past the WRP and onto the Gwent list.  I would definitely submit it though, it is probably as good a candidate as we can hope for this 'winter' and I'm sure the WRP members love flammea records to adjudicate on <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /> How did it look size-wise in the field? How many redpolls was it with? A lot of the redpolls round here are paired up now.Cheers,Darryl</blockquote>

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