This is the best pic I have and unfortunately the bird has his head turned away slightly! Is it a dunnock? It certainly looks like one but I hesitate as there was a flock of them (this was the only one close enough for a picture) and I've always thought of these birds as staying only in pairs... Thanks! Taken yesterday in Shropshire.
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Looks like a dunnock to me! They have interesting little lives lol They can gather together in flocks in winter, it's only spring when they "pair" up with all the bits on the side and all that.
Millie & Fly the Border Collies
Hi MarJus
Definitely going with dunnock - have a few of these too in our garden (love em to bits), markings beneath the eye and on the sides of the head behind the eye all point to dunnock.
Regards
Kerry
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Hi MarJus,
Did you notice their behaviour? I was once advised this is the most foolproof method of ID-ing a dunnock.
I have them all the time in my garden and have never seen more than 4 in the garden at the same time, and even these are never together as such, they are normally in different bits of the garden. They are always on the ground near the bushes and flower pots, never perched in the bushes or trees or on feeders. They seem to flick their tails or wings as they move about, and are very, very fast when moving across open ground. They always seem to be nervous and skitty, eating up the spills from the other birds and looking for the mealworms I scatter about. Other birds will wait up in the trees before coming down, but the dunnocks just appear over a fence and back down to the ground again. If disturbed, they scoot off into the bushes rather than fly away.
Cheers, Linda.
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Hi Marjus.
That's a nice picture. I'm also certain the bird is a dunnock.
Paul.
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Hi guys,
yups it's a dunnock- nice grey shawl, pointy bill and fleshy orange legs
S
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I agree with everyone else. Dunnocks are lovely little birds, full of character and often dismissed as uninteresting but I have two which spend the day in the trellis part of the fence in my yard and they are very endearing and entertaining to watch.
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Thanks all! It 'screamed' dunnock at me but having not seen one in a loose flock like it I was doubting myself! It was sitting on top of some sort of cabbage thing in the middle of a field. It sat there quite still for a few seconds before flying off! It was their calling that made me look through the hedge and spot this one! The others were in surrounding trees and hedges.
I've marked Kat and Kezmo as giving the answer as they were the first two to, but you all have really! :-)
Hmm, I don't normally disagree with other people's identification (everyone here is so knowledgeable!) but this doesn't look quite like a dunnock to me! It looks much paler underneath with much stronger head markings than I've seen before (of course, I could have been identifying my dunnocks wrongly for years!)
Not sure what it is if it's not a dunnock though :-)
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mmmmmm ...
I didn't like to say before because I am so new at this, but he doesn't look like my dunnocks (although, like Cartimandua, my dunnocks may be something else entirely!!!) but what I have always thought of as my dunnocks are much more of a slate grey underneath and perhaps a darker brown on top, and I'm sure their tails are a bit longer.
oooh I wonder if you are right? Personally I think it's a dunnock. I've double clicked the picture and the speckled markings under the eye with the greyness to the side of the head behind the eye all points to a dunnock to me, plus the shape of the beak - then again what do I know! :-)