Age codes – poll
13th January, 2021 | Ringing
Dear visitors of this website,
purpose of this website is to share my photos with you. One of the aims is also to serve as a reference for you when you are ageing species you encounter in the field. Therefore, I would like to make the age codes used in the gallery as clear to you as possible.
I am using a hybrid system here. I use a coding based on calendar system used here in Czech Republic with an appropriate euring code. The euring code should be self-explanatory by itself but I found out that some people are not exactly familiar with it. Also, stating that age of some bird is e.g., 2Y (euring: 5) might imply that the bird is actually two years old when in reality it didn’t probably celebrate its first birthday, yet[1]. Maybe adding a C for “calendar” in there and making it 2CY would therefore made things a bit clearer..?
Anyway, quite recently, I was warned that when I want to describe, let’s say, an “adult” Common Chaffinch (i.e. one which is at least one year old, see the example bird below) in spring, I might be actually confusing quite a few ringers from quite a few European countries. At this website, such birds are labelled 2Y+ (euring: 6). But in Sweden (and some other countries) such bird would be called 3Y+, or 3CY+ (see here ).
So, the question is. What would be the most logical and straightforward way to call such bird for you? Let’s say you trap a Common Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) in spring and it is clearly an “adult” bird, i.e. there are no juvenile flight feathers, tail feathers, coverts etc., whole plumage is post-juvenile (euring 6)[2]. I am attaching an example bird below. Please let me know in the poll, what would you prefer (choose one option only) and if you would like to, you can add a commentary, too. I will analyze the results and try to update my gallery accordingly. Many thanks for your help!
CZEP19-193
Sex: m, age: 2Y+ (euring: 6), trapped: May, 2019 in Vysočina Region, Czech Republic
» The poll has ended. Thank you very much for your participation. Results are available here: poll results. «
[1] This misunderstanding is also quite often the reason why some people seem to almost hate calendar system in my opinion.
[2] Please, this is not an ageing exercise. Forget about some juvenile moulting completely and other irregularities. I am trying to make the gallery more user-friendly by this poll, not to discuss about moult this time, thank you very much for your understanding.