Coming Soon: August's Fledgling Parade
As August unfolds, London's gardens and parks are filled with the next generation of birds. But telling them apart can be a delightful challenge! From the reddish-brown hue of a young blackbird to a juvenile magpie's tell-tale short tail, this month offers a unique opportunity to become a fledgling detective. Some young birds are still being cared for by their parents, while others are already exploring on their own, starting to show the colours and markings that will define them as adults.
Why do young tits look yellower, and how can you spot a young peregrine?
Join us on August 10th for our guide to identifying the varied and charming juvenile birds of London.
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Juvenile Birds
Fledglings this month are at their most varied. A small number are still in nests, others are still following their parents and some have become quite independent. If the weather and food supply has permitted it, wren, goldfinch, greenfinch, bullfinch, house sparrow, spotted flycatcher, yellowhammer, wood pigeon, reed and sedge warbler as well as many swallows and martins may still be attending their final broods.
By now many other fledglings will have lost their down and any ear tufts and may have started to develop different markings or possibly the same colours as their parents. Some may even already look like their parents e.g. meadow pipits, buzzards, Canada geese and some of the various warblers. Others specifically look more like their mothers e.g. sparrows, linnets, yellow wagtails, kestrels and pheasants.
It is probably in gardens that Londoners notice young birds the most. Young chaffinches and bullfinches are getting redder breasts. Young greenfinches have more yellow on their wings and young goldfinches more gold. All the young tits seem yellower than their parents and young great tits have whiter cheeks. You can now tell young blackbirds from young song thrushes as they are more of a reddish brown compared with the greenish buff of thrushes. Young magpies are immediately given away by their short tails.
Juvenile house martins, jackdaws, sparrowhawks are all browner versions of their parents and kingfishers, chaffinches and cygnets just drabber. Young starlings, coots and pied flycatchers are slightly paler and yellowhammers slightly darker. When it comes to young herring gulls, they are substantially whiter, whereas wrens, song thrushes, skylarks, cormorants and terns are just more mottled. Young peregrines may have developed some streaks on their chests but they are not yet the well defined bars of their parents.
In woods the different colours of young woodpeckers and blackcaps have already been mentioned, but now young nuthatches are showing a little more pink and jays more red. Young wood pigeons still have no white collar and coots no frontal shield, but in open areas buntings may be growing moustaches. It is not always colour that identifies juveniles from adults. In curlews, the young have shorter bills, swallows have shorter streamers and herons a less conspicuous crest.
It is also worth looking at legs. Young greylag geese have grey legs compared with the pink ones of their parents. For some, the most beautiful of all juveniles are the striped young collected on the back of grebes and the most ugly are those of the cuckoo. Young cuckoos are grossly large and overly demanding and so all our sympathy goes to their tiny all-suffering surrogate parents.
