A year ago this week we published a series of images of birds nesting in Barga vecchia under the title “Birds nesting around Porta Reale – wildlife in an urban environment”
This year the birds are back but there is something new – a nesting pair which are making strange clicking noises as they search around for grubs, seeds and food.
Maybe somebody out there can name this type of bird with its distinctive red tail and Geiger-counter-like sound?
EDIT – two minutes after posting this article, the answer came up – Codirosso Spazzacamino (Phoenicurus Ochruros) or Black redstart
Thank you Gianluca Porqueddu
The black redstart is 13–14.5 cm in length and 12–20 g in weight, similar to the common redstart. The adult male is overall dark grey to black on the upperparts and with a black breast; the lower rump and tail are orange-red, with the two central tail feathers dark red-brown. The belly and undertail are either blackish-grey (western subspecies; see Systematics, below) or orange-red (eastern subspecies); the wings are blackish-grey with pale fringes on the secondaries forming a whitish panel (western subspecies) or all blackish (eastern subspecies). The female is grey (western subspecies) to grey-brown (eastern subspecies) overall except for the orange-red lower rump and tail, greyer than the common redstart; at any age the grey axillaries and underwing coverts are also distinctive (in the common redstart these are buff to orange-red). One-year-old males are similar to females but blacker; the whitish wing panel of the western subspecies does not develop until the second year