These last few weeks have really demonstrated that which I already knew--that we have a great group of people in our ringing group. So many of them have been out early mornings, late mornings, afternoon and evenings catching phenomenal numbers of great birds.
The most numerous has been the Redwing which have arrived in big numbers. Pete has been catching regularly in the twenties and thirties, Jennie in smaller but regular numbers while Kevin and Gareth have had several catches in the 40's with one fabulous morning at Great Bridgeford where they caught 88!!
Gareth finally managed to catch a troublesome but tiny male Sparrowhawk:_
It may be small but a powerful and efficient predator nonetheless.
Liz is the latest of our trainees to get her ringing licence, and she enjoyed her first solo garden ringing session this morning. She ringed a few House Sparrows, all of which were males like this smart individual
Kevin has been ringing at his (almost) city centre site at the Racecourse which regularly turns up exciting and interesting birds. The latest is this rather plain but special Chiffchaff:-
'Normal' Chiffchaffs are variously greeny/grey/ brown with brown legs and yellow soles to the feet, whereas this is very pale grey above, white below with black legs and feet. It's a Siberian Chiffchaff of which there have been quite a lot around the country over recent weeks. I wonder how it's feeling based in Wolverhampton?
Kev has also started catching Yellowhammers at Patshull ( so far) which is giving him the opportunity to start his colour ringing project to find out more about this farmland species. Here is a Yellowhammer with a normal metal ring on its right leg and a plastic colour ring on it's left leg with engraved letters and numbers on:-
The aim here is that birders -especially if they have a telescope-can read the colour ring in the field so we can collect data without having to recapture the bird.
Finches can be quite difficult to catch but Paul is persisting manfully against the weather gods and is steadily building up numbers of particularly Linnets
Jen, Col, Sam, Shaun and Tom have been out with the thermal imager on a few nights even though the moon is quite bright and they have started catching good numbers of Skylark--Jen and Sam were well pleased a couple of nights ago to also catch their first two Woodcock of this season, recently arrived from who knows where in north eastern Europe or Asia.
More news next week!
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