Redwing

This afternoon I finally managed to catch up with my first Redwing of the season. It was feeding on holly berries in the Avonbank Gardens in Stratford, down near the chain ferry, where at just after 3pm it was so dark I could barely see the tree, let alone the bird. Luckily the R5's eye tracking caught hold of the catchlight, and after a brief but bitter struggle with the exposure triangle I landed a handful of acceptable shots, two of which I'm posting here.

The other day on Bluesky I saw an interesting discussion about the difference between the two races of Redwing we see here in the UK. Most of these arrive in autumn from Scandinavia and Russia, and are what's called the nominate subspecies: Turdus iliacus iliacus. But there is a second race, which breeds in Iceland and the Faroe Islands, called Turdus Iliacus coburni, which is larger and darker than the iliacus form, with stronger streaking. It's most often recorded as a winter migrant in Scotland and Ireland, but it could easily turn up in other parts of mainland Britain too and might not be recognised as a Scandinavian bird.

To my untutored eye this Redwing looks especially saturnine - but then, I did photograph it in the dark. If you'd like to try to become more confident than I am at telling the difference between the iliacus and coburni forms, there's a BirdGuides article about them here.