Training hard

Apologies for lack of posts recently but we have been very busy helping folk experience the potential of thermal imaging for a range of uses.
First up was an old friend who is starting a PhD study into the interaction of hedgehogs with nesting tern species. To date they have used a variety of methods--for example illuminating the colony at night to see what's happening--all of which have a potential impact on the behaviour of the animals being watched. I suggested he explore the imager, and took him out for an evening on one of our farms. He was quite excited by the potential of watching activity without disturbance. The ease with which we could see mice in the field I'm pretty sure was the deal breaker! We also caught another 3 Jack Snipe and a couple of Fieldfare. A few years ago having caught these birds in one night I would have been buzzing--but in truth I was a tad disappointed given the number that didn't allow close contact--several Woodcock, Snipe, Fieldfare and Skylark, were all super jumpy.

Next day I travelled to Leicestershire to demonstrate the machine to a couple of ringers. It was a very sunny day and by the time I got there one of the major limitations of the imager was very apparent. When vegetation soaks up the sunlight it heats up very quickly so you end up looking for a little glowing white bird in a big glowing mass of grasses and sedges. We didn't catch but I hope we saw enough for them to pursue their intent to buy an imager.

Next day I was back at our main Jack Snipe site to demonstrate to another ringer from Northampton. Conditions were again far from ideal with bright sunshine--but we arrived earlier in the day than the previous day so the vegetation wasn't too warmed up. Fortunately we caught a couple of Jack Snipe--giving our visitor Peter a new species to begin to get to grips with. I'm pretty sure he will be getting an imager when he can pull together the finance. I called in to the site again today and caught another three Jacks--two new birds and one we caught originally in December 2019, and have re-caught twice now--providing some useful information about how long some of these birds use the site. It was good to give Paul A the chance to ring these new birds given that like many ringers he had only ringed one Jack Snipe previously. We have now ringed just under 50 Jack Snipe at this very small site since November 2019--superb!

Our decision to put on training sessions for our trainees every Wednesday and Saturday ( weather permitting ) is paying off handsomely. Our trainees are responding well with a good turnout to each session; their progress is good and it's giving those of us who are a bit long in the tooth an extra impetus to get out there and help these enthusiastic youngsters--I can call them that cos they're all younger than Pete and me! In addition we've had great support from the trainees for our evening lamping sessions but we were conscious that they needed some time to develop their skills at finding birds with the imagers. This is starting to become evident now and last night Liz and Jen were buzzing after catching their own 5 Skylarks and a Blackbird -- great stuff well done!!

I hope to have some pictures to lighten things up in my next post--but for now I'd like to register my thanks and those of our trainees to Paul T, Kev and Pete who have kept the training programme going all through since October. Thanks team!!