Your Questions

Send all your birding questions to birdwatching@bauermedia.co.uk and our experts will give you the answers

Spanish mystery bird

Can you please help us identify the attached bird? It was found in Andalucia, in mid-September.

We thought it may be a female Sardinian Warbler, or possibly an Iberian Chiffchaff.

David and Pam Manger

Your bird, ‘hiding’ in a rather dry looking tree, is neither of the species you have suggested. Instead, it is a ‘female-type’ Redstart (or Common Redstart, if you prefer). The Robin-like structure, plain, grey brown upperparts, with a distinct pale eye-ring, and orange belly/flanks and red-brown tail are the key giveaways. Males (even young males) tend to have more orange on the breast than your bird.

Though there are ‘localised’ breeding Redstarts in Andalucia (ie southern Spain), your bird could well be a migrant stopping off on its southward passage.

Perplexing peep

I wonder if you could help identify this bird [right] spotted on a beach in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in mid-September, please. Being pretty small (I’d guess about 6ins) I have wondered whether it’s a stint (as you mentioned in September’s edition) , or possibly a sandpiper.

However, whenever I compare leg colours, beak shape etc. with the species range on the continent, I don’t seem to get anything that matches up!

Mark Bradford

Firstly, on a technical point, a stint is a type of sandpiper (most of the smallest ones, particularly in the Old World, tend to be called stints, while in North America, they are named sandpipers or, more colloquially, peeps). This is one of those tiny ones (based on structure), and one of the features which helps hugely in ID is the leg colour, which is obviously pale and yellowish. Only one tiny North American peep has yellow legs: the Least Sandpiper, and that is what your bird is.

Bittern or Corn Crake?

I took this photograph on the Île de Brehat in Brittany, and am unable to identify it. Bittern and Corn Crake have both been suggested. I wonder if you might be able to help.

Meryl Mead-Briggs

We can see why both Corn Crake and Bittern have been suggested for this bird, with its neatly patterned, almost cryptic, patterning, in beige and black, as well as that ‘face’ which looks somewhat like a game bird. That is because it is a ‘gamebird’, a female Pheasant stretching up to look over the tall grass. Pheasants are curious in that they are so familiar, and have ultimately come from released stock (whether recently, or hundreds of years ago), yet are often put in field guides almost as an afterthought, without particularly helpful illustrations for ID!

‘Dozy’ Goldfinch

We have had a family of Goldfinches visiting our niger feeder regularly over the last few weeks, which has been an absolute delight. More recently, however, we have seen only one juvenile. He/she comes often, feeds very slowly and meticulously, stays for some while but appears rather lonely! It has also been seen hopping around on the ground which I think is unusual for a Goldfinch although not unknown – I have never seen one do this before. It seems quite healthy and does not appear to be in any physical distress but looks bemused and a little bit ‘dozy’, if you can describe a bird in that way!

The rest of the family have not been seen recently and may have decided to migrate? We are interested to know if you have an explanation for this apparently strange behaviour.

Richard Marsh

The fact that your juvenile Goldfinch (not the one shown above) has been acting a bit ‘dozy’ and feeding on the ground makes us worry that it may have ‘fat finch disease’ aka Avian Trichomonosis. Seen in Greenfinches in the UK for the last 15 or so years, the disease comes from a parasitic protozoan (Trichomonas gallinae), and in pigeons is usually called canker (and frounce in birds of prey). It is transmitted from contaminated drinking water, or indeed from an infected parent feeding its young. It is mainly seen in younger birds, like your juvenile Goldfinch. If this is the case, the bird may recover, but try to make sure that all feeders and drinking water containers are cleaned thoroughly and preferably moved to another area.

Of course, it may just be a hanger on, who is enjoying the overspilled seed, while the rest of the family have left to forage elsewhere.

Garden flock action

We live in Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire, and at about 8.45am, one recent morning, I looked out of the bedroom window to check on the weather and was amazed to see a host of mainly Blue Tits, but also other small birds, and even Wrens, flying haphazardly across the garden. They would alight on one of our conifers or other large trees and then fly off again to another tree, back and forth for at least 20 minutes, while we continued to watch in amazement. Looking across at our neighbour’s garden, I could see the birds there, too, on the trees.

Someone we mentioned it to suggested they might be catching flying ants but we didn’t see any real evidence of that. During the night, we had some slight rainfall and the air was still damp with a light rain. Could they have just been enjoying the moisture in the air after the hot, dry conditions of the few days previously? We spotted at least one having a dip in the bird bath.

Rhona Mogridge,

Henley on Thames From late summer onwards, many small birds, but especially the tit family (as well as Long-tailed Tits) gather in mixed foraging flocks and go on the rove. They will pass together through woodland and gardens, often with tens of birds involved. Blue Tits, Great Tits and Long-tailed Tits often make up the bulk of such flocks, but they can be joined by Wrens, Nuthatches, Treecreepers, Chaffinches and the odd Goldcrest and Wren, for instance. It could well be that one such flock was visiting your neighbourhood and found an excellent source of food in your garden and that of your neighbour. This could well have been ants, or perhaps some other recently emerged flying insects. Whatever it was, the birds clearly were making the most of it if they stayed as long as 20 minutes!