My Saturday Bird this week is the Redwing (Turdus iliacus), a member of the thrush family. It’s not related to the Red-winged Blackbird native to North America.
The Redwing is native to Europe and the Palearctic and is a winter visitor to the U.K. although a few birds stay to breed in the summer. This individual is eating a Holly berry in a garden in Hatherton, Cheshire, England.
My Saturday Bird this week is the Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus), a small gull that breeds in much of the Palearctic.
The birds in the photo are winter plumage adults who lost their dark head feathers in the autumn. They’re standing in a shallow section of Hurleston Reservoir near Nantwich in southern Cheshire, England, a lot of them are preening.
In the 1990s Hurleston Reservoir was the location of a large winter gull roost that included thousands of Black-headed Gulls.
My Saturday Bird this week is the Eurasian Nuthatch (Sitta europaea).
Alternative common English names are Wood Nuthatch and simply Nuthatch. The species is found across most of Europe and a large section of Asia. This bird was photographed in Cheshire, England.
My Saturday Bird this week is a juvenile Red Knot (Calidris canutus) resting on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada.
This individual hatched from an egg in the summer and is now heading south for the winter. It has stopped on the shoreline to feed and rest having already flown from northern Canada. It could travel as far as the southern tip of South America for the winter.
My Saturday Bird this week is a juvenile Sanderling on autumn migration.
Photographed early morning on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada.
My Saturday Bird this week is a male Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis).
Alternative common English names include Eurasian Kingfisher and River Kingfisher although I don’t recall ever seeing one on a river. The species is found across Europe, North Africa and Asia.
This individual was photographed on a small pool next to a canal in southern Cheshire, England in the early 1990s.
My Saturday Bird this week is the Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris). The only Hummingbird species that breeds in eastern North America.
This is a male photographed in mid summer. After courtship and mating the male leaves the female to raise the young. Males start heading south as soon as early August.
I selected this photo to show the worn plumage. The bird will moult its plumage when on its wintering grounds. They spend the winter in Central America, Mexico or Florida. Some birds make a 900 mile flight across the Gulf of Mexico.
