Hopes beginning to be fulfilled !

 On 30th April, I posted about a new site that one of our team, Gareth, was taking on--and at that time we had high hopes for this new site.

After a bit of a false start last week, when Gareth turned up very early in the morning to find that the site had been vandalised. He acted quickly and reported the incident, the owners were really grateful for the tip off, and have introduced more security.

Early this morning Gareth turned up to try again with some help from Dad, Kevin and friend Paul. The great news is that it looks like our hopes for the site are being realised. With only 3 net sites open, they ringed a smashing total of 55 new birds and a couple of retraps. The new birds included some top quality birds, including 2 Kingfishers, a juvenile Common Redstart, 10 Common Whitethroat, 13 Chiffchaff and 5 Blackcap!!

Here is a picture of one of the Kingfishers..

As you can clearly see, both upper and lower mandibles of the beak are black--meaning this is a male bird ( females have an orange lower mandible)

This is a recently fledged Common Redstart. We can tell it's a Redstart by the orange tail, And that it's a recently fledged bird because of the buff tips to many of the feathers on the head, breast and upper back. The bird will quite quickly replace most of these over the coming weeks, then it will begin to look much more like a Redstart should.

So, great news for Gareth and the group--he is already looking forward to visiting again soon, when he hopes to be able to set a few more nets to see what else he can ring.