Make hay while the moon fades........

Although the general weather has been very poor and the strong winds have made conventional mist netting virtually impossible, there has been a silver lining. The best conditions for thermal imaging is when the night is dark--and over the recent and coming period the moon is waning, and not rising until the early hours of the morning.
We therefore planned a few session to make the most of this situation and so far they are proving pretty successful.

On Thursday evening at our usual farm we managed 8 Skylark ( including2 retraps); 3 Grey partridge ( including 1 retrap); 1 Fieldfare and last but by no means least 4 Jack snipe. I will come back to Jacks later.

On Friday morning we visited our Jack snipe site to monitor numbers and see if we could catch any. It was great to count 25 Jacks and 8 Common snipe at the site. Although the Jacks were very 'jumpy'--we did manage to catch 5; two of which were new birds, and three of which were already ringed. These ringed birds provide some really useful information--two had been ringed at the site over the last month. This shows how important the site is, and also helps to let us know that catching the birds doesn't put them off using the site.
The third ringed bird had been ringed at the site by us in March 2019. This was useful in two ways. First it was a bird which we know was an 'adult. so we could check the ageing criteria I posted a while ago. But second it raised as couple of potential possibilities. Either the bird has been using the site all winter--in which case it supports the importance of the site. However, we haven't re-trapped this bird all winter--so perhaps it could be a bird which is using this site as a conditioning stopover on its migration northeast back to its breeding grounds. Maybe it was on its way last March and is using the same site this year. Either way this is clearly an important site and we are working with the owners to maintain its character.

9, 10, Jack!! Not satisfied we were out again last night--with mixed success. Although there were plenty of birds at our favoured farm--they wouldn't allow close approach for some reason --we have no idea why this sometimes happens. However at a farm we have visited in the past but not this year, we had a good catch. Wet stubble and a sheep grazed flood meadow yielded 1 Woodcock, 5 Skylarks and another 8 Jack snipe--making 10 Jacks ringed on Friday--hence the corny intro.......

Just to put these Jack snipe numbers into context--we have ringed 56 birds since November which might not seem a lot. However. it is 20+% of the numbers of Jack snipe ringed in the whole of the UK in 2018, and in many recent years its almost as many as are caught in the whole of the UK.

Out again tomorrow evening--report in due course.......