Just a short post today. Last evening we set half of our nets at Belvide in readiness for the new season starting on Wednesday 1st July ( see later). We had 4 trainees with us so we decided that it would be a good idea to leave the nets open for a while to get the trainees back into the swing of things after the lay-off. For a late afternoon/evening session it went very well with 41 new birds--mainly warblers with 17 Sedge and 15 Reed making up the bulk. Of these there was a very encouraging number of juveniles, ie hatched this year--which we hope bodes well for the rest of the season.
Early on in the session while we were deep into the setting of nets, things took a rather surreal turn when ace birder Steve came running ( as best he could) past us shouting 'Laughing Gull gone to the Chappell Hide bund-- totally excited. After which there was a mini invasion of birders who had abandoned their Sunday tea to twitch the bird. Which was a first for Staffordshire. That gave us a chance to involve some twitchers in our ringing activities and show them some of the birds--always goes down well.
Which leads me on to the next few days. We will be setting the remainder of the nets in place on Tuesday and safely furling all the nets ready for our official opening on Wednesday morning. As in previous years we will be operating every Wednesday and Saturday mornings and WMBC members are warmly invited to join us from about 6.30 am. Just to clarify though--because of current restrictions we probably won't be able to involve visitors in quite the same way as usual--but we'll do our best!
Pictures of the birds coming in the next posts!!
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