Ogden re visited, late p.m.

 Autumn is coming. LBBs showing winter head streaking now

 1st summer Black Headed , left, with
summer hood gone.

 Common gulls losing pure white heads now and
           showing streaking.

A good count of gulls at Ogden this evening with c80 BHGs, 27 Commons and 10 LBBs but only one Cormorant.
Passerine alley was lively but nothing on the scale of  yesterdays visit due to a strong WSW>5 and a later visit, 1800 hrs, with the sun almost below the tree tops.
The beauty of an early evening visit to passerine alley is that it,s the only area of trees around the perimeter that has sun on them so the birds move into the Willows where the insects are still active.
This was proved by the Firecrest back in Nov 2013 when it was re located there on 3 seperate evenings.
                                                   Tonight the majority of passerines were Gt, Blue and Coal Tit along with 1 f Blackcap and 2 Willow Warblers whilst Blackbirds are moving into the area for the Rowan berries. The Chaffinch flock was again present but mobile and down to around 20 but no sign of Spotted Fly, Siskin , Bullfinch or Greenfinch tonight.

Now for the heavy stuff :-
                                             

   Going back to last nights blog
                just another everyday Cormorant photo ?

                                         but zoomed in exposing the gulpar pouch which is the bare skin between the gape and chin, this inspired Mick Cunningham, who else, who has gone deep into the Cormorant race doing an arcticle and drawings identifying the British Carbo race from the Continental Sinensis race, to e mail me telling me to Google the races for the angle between the gape line and the gular pouch.   For those of you still awake, this I did and this particular Cormorant shows up as a Sinensis continental race of which most inland birds seem to be now with the British race Carbo mainly sticking to the coast. This is apparently the only sure way of telling the races apart but to make it even more complicated there are several Hybrids around.
                                                                        You probably find this deep in and heavy going but the point is that even when birding is quiet and you are only finding common birds there is always something of interest you can delve into with the birds you have found, especially now with the internet at your fingertips so dont get bored get investigating.
BS