hello thanks for the invite 🙂
out my garden i have noticed 1 solitary male black billed blackbird eating away at my blackberries, looks like the migrants are starting to come 🙂
(images coming soon…)
hello thanks for the invite 🙂
out my garden i have noticed 1 solitary male black billed blackbird eating away at my blackberries, looks like the migrants are starting to come 🙂
(images coming soon…)
Glamorgan Bird Club 
Hi Leah, the black bill just means it’s a young common or garden blackbird, so it’s not really a migrant. Poss a young one from a local pair. The bill develops the familiar yellow colour as it gets older.
ah right i just assumed that around about now the blackbirds from Scandinavia have started coming over, the way he sings sounds unusually different too, not like the ones i have seen in my garden before o well either way he was enjoying the blackberries
it was something like this i saw, didnt look much like a juvenile 🙂 [img]http://www.devonbirds.org/images/library/dbn/public/scandinavian_blackbird_1st_winter_male_dark_beaked_1st_winter_scandinavian_blackbird_turdus_merula_1280_0.jpg[/img]
Leah you may be right. A bit of Googling has revealed that apparently young Scandinavian birds do not develop their yellow bills [or indeed yellow eyeing] until the spring following the year they were born, whereas ‘ours’ will have already started that change in the first winter. Interesting.
hehe i only found that out when i was watching autumnwatch either last year or the year before 🙂 it was cool today there was one male blackbrid with a yellow-beak and the other male black billed they were fighting earlier for a spot on the line post hehe