Lots of action.

 As I mentioned in my last report, migration is really on at a pace and we are having lots of success. As well as our main site at Belvide, we put on an extra special session at Witches Oak to support our colleague Ben. Extra group members helped set more nets, some slept over for an early start next day--the result was that we ringed 201 new bird--mostly migrants--including 2 Grasshopper Warblers ( new for the site), 5 Cettis warblers, 54 Sedge Warblers, 23 Blackcap,19 Reed Warblers and plenty of other birds.

Overall the group has ringed well over 1000 birds during August and there's still more than a week to go.

I've just had a lovely picture sent from Jenni .....

It's our second Redstart of the year--I know I posted a picture of our first a couple of weeks ago---but I never tire of looking at these little stunners. In the field I love watching them land after a short flight because their tail wobbles as it it was connected by elastic. Fab!

This was a very exciting bird we caught a few days ago. It's called a Whinchat, and although in this juvenile plumage it's fairly drab, the excitement was because it's only the second of this species we've ringed at Belvide. The broad white supercilium ( stripe) over the eye is one of the main distinguishing features although in this shot the lighting doesn't really show it well.

At our Saturday session last week, the Sand and House Martins started to appear early morning and we managed to catch the first ones of the season.

This could almost be a 'mystery bird' photograph. It is in fact a juvenile Sand Martin. You can tell it's a Sand Martin because of the generally brown plumage with the soft brown bib. It's a juvenile because of the white edges to the wing feathers which you can see quite clearly.

I won't be posting for a couple of weeks because a team of us are headed for a ringing site 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Norway. Lucky us!! We will hope to be sending daily blog posts from there and if we do I'll get some of the younger tech savvy members of the group to try and provide a link to this blog.