This year has been brilliant so far for the group-and in some ways it still is; but the domestic scene is suffering a bit from team members strutting their stuff elsewhere!! I'm as guilty as anyone having taken team members away to our successful Portugal trip. Jenni is still having a great time ( we assume ?!) on the island of Skokholm, Kevin has been on Shetland for two weeks and has just been joined by son Gareth for a third week, and currently Sam is in Suffolk on a family holiday. So we are a bit short of active ringers--while our resident active ringers have not been having the best of luck either with the weather or the number of birds available to ring.
Pete is eagerly awaiting the arrival of Redwings from Scandinavia. Between now and late December he regularly catches several hundred of these birds in Chillington. He thought the birds had started to arrive a couple of days ago when he caught two--but the passage has dried up again. I'm sure it won't be too long before I will be reporting on some good catches from him.
Paul has been working on the feeding stations at Brewood Park --and just today he's finally hit on a method for catching the good flock of Linnet that are feeding on a cover crop grown by the farmer. Linnet numbers have been falling in the UK so these are interesting birds to catch. Here is a picture of a fairly drab juvenile female:-
Even adult males are quite drab at this time of year as their bright red breast and forehead is disguised by the buff tips of the feathers to avoid aggression between birds in their winter feeding flocks.
Ageing is reasonably easy by both feather shape-- as in the picture
These are typically pointed juvenile tail feathers although you can see that this bird has already moulted in its new adult type central tail feathers which are much more rounded.
The greater coverts on the wing are also a sign. The yellow bar shows three outer greater coverts which are unmoulted juvenile feathers with lighter tips and edges -as well as being shorter.
Kevin is putting in long days on Shetland but although he has caught a decent number of birds, he hasn't yet connected with any of the rare birds which are on the islands at the moment. He's also been hampered by the pretty awful weather with lots of rain and gale force winds. Let's hope he gets a bit more luck this week. His best bird has been a Scandinavian finch called a Brambling which had already ringed in Spain--we haven't yet got the full story
Adult males like this one are absolute stunners!!
We must give a mention to Ben who has had a superb season at his new Witches Oak site--and who is keen to develop his and the groups experience by trying to ring some wildfowl. He put in a sterling effort during the night last Thursday and wa really unlucky when several birds including Widgeon, Snipe and Green Sandpiper all managed to get out of the nets before he could get to them. Plans are in hand to rectify this!!
Finally a mention of the stellar performance of trainee Tom as the netter at one of our early season thermal imaging sessions at BPF for Skylarks. We managed to catch 19 birds of which 5 were already carrying rings--details on these are being investigated and I'll report them soon.
Finally, Pat reports the appearance of the first few Siskin in his garden--let's hope he attracts the same large floks as last year!
Good luck to all team members over the coming autumn/winer season--I know their efforts will be rewarded!!
No comments:
Post a Comment