The DNA results of the Redstart present near the Riverside Hotel in Nov 2014 are back.
26 March 2015
A sample of the birds droppings were taken and Martin Collinson has kindly processed this for us but unfortunately it has proved to be inconclusive. Martin has commented as follows “Have analysed the DNA from Spurn redstart but as I feared it’s not possible to distinguish between samamisicus and nominate. Its cytb sequence is 1 bp different from a nominate bird from Sweden and from a presumed samamisicus from Krasnador.
There is a lot of genetic variation in Common Redstart, but it’s not divided along subspecies lines. So genetically, your bird could be either”. A rather unsatisfactory result but you can’t win them all. Whatever it was it was certainly an interesting bird and those that made the effort to see it were left with the impression of a bird that didn’t quite match what we are used to seeing Redstarts look like earlier in the autumn.
