We decided to create a new site for trying to catching Meadow Pipits and on Thursday morning Pete stepped up to the plate to give it a test run. It was perfect morning and Pete ended with a respectable 27 new birds--one of which was a classic adult bird which had completed it's post breeding moult as you can see in these two pictures:-
As you can see all of the coverts are wide buff fringed and all the same--compared to this wing of a juvenile bird with w mixture of white and buff edged coverts:-
This adult tail has broad feathers with rounded tips...
Compared to these pointed feathers on a juvenile tail:-
Friday morning looked for all the world as good a day for 'mipit' migration so we set up again--but no--the birds knew better and passage was sparse--leading to only 16 new birds ringed--but great fun nonetheless.
Just to underline how little we really know about predicting bird migration we saw that the forecast for Friday into Saturday predicted fine weather with a cloudy rainy front passing over around 3-4 am. I couldn't wait to get to the nets and was looking forward to a bumper catch--sadly the birds had other ideas!! We ended with only 55 birds which wasn't a bad total but nowhere near our expectations. I guess it's things like that which add a touch of spice through uncertainty.
Monday looks good--to us--but we'll see if the birds thinks so during the morning. I'll post the results after the session as usual.
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