Bits and Pieces

 There's been so much activity in the group recently that it's been quite difficult keeping up! I've decided that the simplest thing is for me just to give you a flavour of our activities--with a few pictures which I hope will be both attractive and informative.

Paul has been running sessions for our trainees regularly on Saturday mornings at the feeding station at Brewood Park Farm. This gives lots of necessary practice at extracting Blue and Great tits--but as the winter wears on more and more interesting birds come in search of food as their naturally available food diminishes.

We were really pleased to ring our first Siskin for some time:-

You can see that this is a male because of the black cap--and that it's a first year bird by the white bar across the wing--in an adult bird this would have been yellow/green.

Here is a view of a male Chaffinch which you don't see every day:-

First look at the superb green colour at the rump area--a characteristic of male Chaffinches but not always seen. Now look at the tail feathers--all quite broad and rounded with the central two having black markings near the shaft. Both features of an adult male bird.

I have mentioned the work we are doing at the Patshull estate, and among quite a lot of activity recently, we managed to put up 4 new owl nestboxes with the help of a superb bit of kit driven by our friend John; here's an example:-

There's never any guarantee of success--but we are keeping fingers crossed. Also a big thanks to Murray who very kindly made these and other boxes for us with wood provided by the West Midland Bird Club.

It's always gratifying when newly qualified ringers get cracking with their new permits. Liz caught this smashing adult male Blackbird in her garden:-

And by the large size of it , it could well be a bird visiting us from the continent.

She is also gradually managing to ring several of the House Sparrows feeding in her garden like this stunning male:-

Jenni and Sam are getting their lamping act together at Church Farm and Patshull with their thermal imager. They didn't have a large catch last week but they did have three quality birds in the forms of:-

                                                  Common Snipe and a Woodcock, shown below:-

And a smashing Stock Dove which we are finding reasonably regularly roosting in fields

Kevin has been pressing on with his colour ringing scheme for buntings and has attached over 20 to Yellowhammers recently--here's a cracking male:-

And finally for now, Pete and Paul have been relentlessly depriving themselves of a lie in on most mornings in order to continue ringing large numbers of Redwing. Daily numbers fluctuate widely--but they have so far managed almost 700 in a year where there hasn't been the numbers that we sometimes see. Well done chaps!!

Just a quick reminder of how smart these small thrushes are!!

More news soon as we come to the end of the year--with some record breaking numbers to report....!