In the past couple of weeks I’ve been seeing a small bird I have never seen in my entire life, which naturally got me super excited. After signing up in a Facebook group I found out that this little one is a Phoenicurus ochruros, commonly known as Tithy’s redstart, blackstart and black redtail.
They live in south and central Europe and Asia and north-west Africa, from Great Britain and Ireland, south to Morocco, east to Central China. I honestly have no clue why she is here as birds of her species are rarely seen far away from their place of origin, but my guess is that she either was chased away from her natural habitat or she was in captivity and managed to escape.
Based on her looks, grey to grey-brown overall except for the yellow-orange lower tail, she’s a juvenile (which explains why she is not scared of people) female black redtail. She has been coming on a daily basis to have a chat with my parakeet for quite a while now (she even brought a male black redtail that seems to be her partner) and they seem to be fond of eachother. Hoping she will stay for the winter, although blackstarts are not big fans of the cold weather.
Török J. Sándor 