I was hoping to open the net Christmas day but had to wait till Boxing day. It was warm and slow. The total was one Woodpigeon, one Blackbird, one Great Tit and this Blue Tit.
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Blue Tit, Cyanistes caeruleus or Parus caeruleus
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Blue Tit, Cyanistes caeruleus or Parus caeruleus
Why this bird and why two names? Species splitting and un-splitting seems to be something the bird world, though im sure this stretches across the animal world in general, is keen on. Saying that I think some people seem more keen than others.
It seems that the Tits were generally all lumped in the Parus genus. Linnaeus put Blue Tit in, sometime around 1758. Then someone in a shed somewhere, also known as Taxonomy Committees (I do wish these people would get out more often!) continued the 'science' and birds were thrown out of one genus in to another. Actually the Cyanistes genus came about in 1829 by Kaup. Blue Tit was moved across in 2006.
Heres a couple of websites that you might like to check out - be warned, they are for the retentive - luckily I managed to save myself from brain meltdown. Its bad enough as a birder being lumped in with trainspotters so please dont let a 'normal' person catch you looking....
http://ornithology.com/names/
http://www.ornitaxa.com/SM/TaxChanges.html
Back to something more interesting. Possibly. Survival is everything. So, I ringed this bird on 6 December this year. Here it is three weeks later. Surviving. A female bird born this year so at most around 6 months old. Sure, its not a long time. But a small scale sample of how ringing works. Its survived, its been measured and sexed, it hasnt really gone too far. So we already know a reasonable amount about it. Extrapolate this out for all ringed species over many years and the science comes in to its own.
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