Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Pied Flycatchers, Broadway Cemetery, Peterborough

Brian Stone finally saw his first Pied Flycatcher on 27 August 2015. He also found this bird and I went to twitch it. Over the next week, I visited the cemetery several times and spent tens of hours there. In that time, I once heard a calling Pied Fly while watching another one and suspected based on plumage differences that I was looking at at least two different birds. I believe my photos confirm that there were at least two during the first week of September. This was only the second time I have encountered the species in 15 years in the Peterborough area. The last I saw was a few years ago in Marie Barton's amazing garden in Murrow. Both the birds shown here appear to be first-winters and both have well developed 'second' (median covert tips) wing bars, which are not universal on Pied Flycatchers, but can and do occur...
Side-by-side comparison. I think the difference in tertial fringes and fringes on the rump shows these are different birds. But I may be wrong...

1 comment:

marie said...

Hello Mike

As you happened to mention the Pied Flycatcher, I thought I would mention the fact that I had another one in the back garden about 3 weeks ago. It was the call that I heard first and which drew me to it. I spent a couple of hours watching it flycatching. It had gone by the next day.

Best wishes Marie