Willow Warbler - New Garden Tick!

I make a joke about a new garden tick yesterday and a real new garden tick turned up today!

I was sat editing Ponty v Newbridge Semi Final pictures when I noticed a small bird flit along the lawn. At first I thought it was a Jenny Wren, it was small enough, but then I clocked it was green. My next immediate thought was it was a Chiffchaff, as I have had one in a garden once. I quickly grabbed the camera, and got a distant shot at high ISO and hand held that I was quite pleased with. It flew off into the woods, an I thought that was that! I got back to photo editing.

Time passed, and I suddenly clocked movement out of the corner of my eye ... the Willow Warbler was back, and was right outside the patio doors! I rattled off a series of shots, and settled on this one as the best one! Dead chuffed with it.

As a mildly amusing aside, I spent ages looking through the Collins 2Ed (the birding bible) trying to ID it, and separate it from the Chiffchaff, one key indicator is the length of the wing primary feathers ... Chiffchaff quite long, Willow Warbler quite stubby ... so I was trawling through the photos from various angles to try and work out the feather lengths, when someone pointed out Chiffchaffs have black legs, Willow Warblers don't .... *sigh*