A few of the photos and a video of this year's baby Beardies. They hung around the bridge every morning for a week but like the Aldi special offers 'When they're gone they're gone and only seen one or two individuals this week. Hopefully, as in the past, the last week in July will be good for fledglings and of course by September they should have developed their secondary sex characteristics and they usually flock in larger groups.
Absolutely first class Mr Lawton - well done, I know the work involved in capturing and putting that video together. Brilliant.
Dai
I don't know how you manage it - another stunning video :-)
Best regardsNigel
| My Images | Newport Wetlands on Flickr @barman58
Thanks guys! I tried to include a few different aspects of their behaviour, glad you liked it!
Very impressive John. To think you got all that footage just from a week's viewing. I didn't realise the juveniles are already beginning to pair. I haven't seen Common sandpipers at the wetlands either. The early bird really does catch the worm.
As always a great thread John.
Cheers Colin and David - I've just got back from London so sorry it's taken so long to reply!
Unknown said:I didn't realise the juveniles are already beginning to pair.
Colin this 'precocious pair-bonding' is something I've been banging on about for a while. I did this other video a month ago in which I put slideshow together of some photos I took showing the same kind of behaviour. the video starts with an extract of a scholarly paper, in which scientists explain their methodology for establishing whether there was any truth in the rumour that Bearded Tits formed pairs at an early age. They went to great trouble - catching Beardies in mist nets and then counting the numbers of each gender to establish whether there was a statistically higher proportion of birds caught as pairs. I'm not knocking this research but simple observation of any given group of young Beardies will show them engaging in the behaviour shown and I believe it is more compelling evidence.
Brilliant John and it would be very interesting to know if any of the other Beardie "colonies" in the UK had similar activity.
I include URL for an article on these little gems.
www.theguardian.com/.../birdwatch-bearded-tit-reedbed
Cracking job John on the photos and even more so on the video.
Regards Shane
My Photos in Flickr.
Thanks David - I've seen this behaviour a number of times now and I'm certain that it's in their nature and not just an idiosyncrasy of our local colony. How nice to see that article from the Guardian - Stephen Moss sharing our passion with non-birders, maybe others will be inspired to make the pilgrimage to their local Wetlands to catch a glance of this.
Cheers Shane - really appreciated!