Yellow Wagtail

Yellow Wagtail, Maxey Pits, Cambs, 5.8.06.
This female Yellow Wagtail was apparently bringing prey to a presumed second brood. The prey, as you may see from this photo was a grasshopper which had had its legs and wings removed. There are loads of grasshoppers at this site, so it makes sense for the wags to use them as a major chock food. So it was no surprise when her partner turned up, also carrying a de-limbed grasshopper.
The female was a colour-ringed bird, with a creamy yellow ring above the BTO ring on the right leg and a blue above red on the left. It will be interesting to find out where it was from – I believe there has been a fair amount of colour-ringing of Yellow Wags recently.
More pics will follow later, so watch this space. Click for a large version

The male partner, also carrying a grasshopper.
I have cropped some of my pics of the feamle to look at the BTO ring. I think it contains 8623, but I may be wrong. What do you think? I used the lettering in the address to get my bearings. The ring should say INFORM BTO BRITISH MUSEUM NAT.HIST. LONDON SW7, I think and you can line up the numbers with the letters of LONDON and the postcode.



All Canon Powershot A95, Kowa TSN-823 + 32xWLER