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Claxton, Norfolk: After the breeding season, resident species such as robins drop their entire plumage and acquire a fresh one. Without this renewal they could not survive winter's rigours
For weeks now the inspection of my moth trap has been a complicated business. As I pull out the egg boxes in which my invertebrate charges sleep, a robin has tried to do a little moth inspection of its own. It is the tattiest bird you've ever seen, with just two tail feathers and an orange bib that's full of "moth holes". The sparse covering over the belly and back sticks out at odd angles as if the plumes are about to fall out, and instead of a sleek sprite it looks like an animated feather duster.
Yet it reminds us of the great drama in the birds' year that humans invariably fail to notice – moult. At the close of the breeding season, resident species such as robins drop their entire plumage and acquire a fresh one. Without this renewal they could not survive the rigours of winter. It is moult that explains why almost every gull you see presently has a wedge-shaped gap along the hindwing where they lose the inner primaries. It's also why the rooks and jackdaws round us are so dishevelled that sometimes one wonders how they fly at all.
During this phase birds that were previously conspicuous suddenly fall silent and almost disappear. Yet everyone has witnessed moult, if only subliminally, because any body of water, especially the park lake or village pond, has its surface film of summer dust topped by a flotilla of free-floating feathers that wander to the water's edge and gather like tiny robin-sized boats. Many of these come from ducks that go into a special dowdy plumage phase known as "eclipse" when they drop all the vital flight feathers.
Moult is most obvious when it's over, because it's then that robins resume their poignant autumn song. It is also when we notice the male mallards with those emerald heads glittering like polished stone, which look as if they've emerged fresh-minted from some feather-soft furnace of life.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
