A Weekend away

Last weekend I went to see my parents in Gloucestershire. The main reason was to drop off a mothers day card in person (hope you had a good day mum!). The secondary reason was to see my dad and do some ringing at his house on Saturday. Apart from half an hour when I had to close the nets due to rain, I did reasonably well, including adding 3 new species for this site!

Above: An adult male Sparrowhawk. This is the first male I've ringed. Last time I ringed here, a sparrowhawk escaped as I approached the net so it was nice to get one on the next attempt!

Above: A female Siskin. Like a lot of people this winter, my dad is reporting Siskins coming to his garden feeders for the first time ever (he's been there about 20 years). At least one male was around but it firmly decided against carrying a ring on its leg despite flirting with the idea several times!

Above: A big, fat Woodpigeon. Enough said!

As well as the 3 new species, a retrap House Sparrow (ringed Nov 2012) was notable as the first retrap of this species (House Sparrows are notorious for being hard to recapture) and as usual for this site, a whole bunch of Blue Tits.

Ringing totals for the day (retraps in brackets)



Blue Tit 18 (7)

Great Tit 3 (1)

Coal Tit 2 (2)

House Sparrow 1 (1)

Woodpigeon 1 (0)

Siskin 1 (0)

Sparrowhawk 1 (0)

Dunnock 2 (2)

Normally I would expect the ratio of Blue Tits to Great Tits to be more even than this, but this area is unusual (at least I think so) in that the number of Blue Tits far outweigh the number of Great Tits.

I've been out strimming grass all week so far for work in far from ideal weather conditions. Strimming will continue until Friday, only punctuated by a day scrub clearing and burning on Thursday. I'm hoping conditions will improve, at the very least by the weekend.

From dawn till dusk

Normally, I'm up at the crack of dawn to ring birds when they're at their most active. Today, the weather forecast predicted rain so I stayed in doing chores. Having found the card reader, I can now take the photographs off my camera and show you some of the birds I've caught when I've been up early.



Above: A Lesser Redpoll ringed at Priory Country Park. This bird had been ringed by another ringer on another site somewhere in Britain. I will post the original ringing details of this bird when it comes through (it may take a while!). This came out of the nets shortly after dawn and the lucky people who came to the guided bird walk on 28th October got to see this bird.

I've had a successful time catching this species both at Priory CP and Sandy Smith NR, having doubled the previous ringing totals for this species at both sites.

Above: A Woodpigeon ringed at Priory Country Park in September.

Above: I renewed my friendship with this Green Woodpecker, also in September. My first retrapping of this species at over 1 year since it was first ringed by me.

Above: A Goldcrest - a new species for Sandy Smith Nature Reserve ringing list.

As the days are shorter, I've been staying out most of the day with my ringing which has worked out nicely on occasion, particularly in catching Goldfinches at Proiry CP.

Above: The spectacular sunset over Bedford from Wednesday 7th November. And no, I wasn't driving, or cycling when taking this photograph (I was sat in the passenger seat). There have been several good sunsets recently and this leads me nicely onto dusk.

Dusk is a time when birds go to roost and lately my thoughts have been turning towards catching birds coming to roost. Having done some chores and desperate to get out ringing, myself and Mike put 4 nets around the outside of a reedbed roost produced the following (retraps in brackets):

Wren 2 (1)
Great Tit 0 (2)
Goldcrest 2 (2)
Blue Tit 4 (5)
Long Tailed Tit 0 (4)
Chiffchaff 1 (0)
Reed Bunting 5 (0)

And lastly one special bird, a species I haven't ringed before.

Above: A Corn Bunting.

The Corn Bunting is the species depicted on the Ivel Ringing Group logo so it's about time we started catching them again!