31/05/08

Several hours activity today (up at 4am) yeilded goldfinch (adult and juvenile), juvenile greenfinch, blue tits and great tits at my trainers house.


A couple of hours rest and a trip to Priory Country Park followed where we ringed the blue tits in boxes 18 & 19 out of 20. The baby blue tits that remained in the nest (4 in one & 6 in the other - they can start with 10 or 11) seem to be doing much better now - they suffered during the rain as the adults struggle to feed them. The Blue Tits in Box 20 seemed doomed (2 dead last time we checked and those alive were too cold). The bottom also fell off the bottom of the box - lucky the nest didn't fall out.


After the nest boxes was a trip into town along the embankment where I was looking for swans with colour rings - I found 6 out of approximately 54 birds (impossible to check all of them). Here is one of them:

New Species 24/05/08

I can now add Kingfisher (finally) and Great Spotted Woodpecker to my Species Ringed list. I have held kingfishers in the hand before (before I decided to go for my license), I even had a chance to ring one once - but the ringer in charge didn't have any SO (small overlap) rings with him! We had to let it go - d'oh!


Saturday 24th May 2008 brought me some luck and I got to ring not 1 but 2 kingfishers (one adult & one juvenile - notably early fledging this year). Sadly, no photo though. One other juvenile kingfisher was caught & ringed (probably all the same family). The site in Gloucester is used as a fly through by Kingfishers and it is unknown whether they stop around to feed.

A brood of 5 Great Spotted Woodpeckers (plus 1 adult) from the nest box was also a highlight of the weekend!




Above & below: A juvenile in the hand. Photo's courtesy of my brother Stain (Green Mark!).

21/05/08

On Wednesday 21/05/08 I went with my trainer (Errol) to check nest boxes in Priory Country Park. 4.30pm arrival. The first box we checked was box number 3:



In nest box number 3 were these Great Tits:




While getting a ring off the string, the Great Tit is held in the ringers grip where the bird is safest:





The ring is then safely applied:





There were broods of blue tits too:





And broods that were too small to ring:





Me with my head in a box: