Thursday 7 June 2012

Whose Chick?

Yesterday, when I was cutting our grass, I spotted what appeared to be an injured chick hopping about on the land we have reclaimed. It looked as if it could have an injured wing; it certainly did not attempt to fly...

As usual Elizabeth was out with the camera...


My first thought was a Cirl Bunting but on consulting the photographs I took earlier in the year it was nothing like a Cirl Bunting.

So it was out with the bird book. Three contenders looked similar - Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff and the Wood Warbler but the beak is too chunky, more of a finch's beak...

Looking at the finch's my best guess would be a female Chaffinch... However it was still hopping about later in the evening and was being attended to by an adult bird which at a distance did not look like a chaffinch...

I will stick with female Chaffinch unless anyone reading this can enlighten me...

I did have a look around the garden today but the chick was nowhere to be seen so we will never know if it managed to fly or became prey to one of the many cats that prowl our garden at night...


3 comments:

Jean said...

Poor little thing, I do hope it survived, whatever it was.

GaynorB said...

Me too!

Pollygarter said...

Juvenile chaffinch... don't worry, with those wing feathers it will be able to fly out of harms way.