Back in action!!

After some debate about exactly WHERE we can ring during the lockdown, the BTO has now clarified the rules and the great news is that so long as we comply with limiting the number in effect to two people, we can continue. As readers will know we have a number of trainees and in ringing it certainly is of paramount importance for trainees to literally keep their hand in-so we are putting on as many sessions as we can and limiting attendance to 1 trainee per trainer. You'll see from the following notes that we have been pretty successful both in terms of numbers/species ringed and providing training opportunities. Just by way of providing a flavour of this, we've put on sessions at feeding stations, Redwing sites, roosts and evening thermal imaging. Within the group we've ringed 204 Redwing when according to most contacts it's not the best year for Redwing numbers. One of the exciting birds caught at these sessions was this superb juvenile male Sparrowhawk...

 

There are two clues to it being a juvenile-first the vertical blotches on the breast ( horizontal lines in an adult), and second the bright yellow iris which becomes orange in adults. We determine the sex of Sparrowhawks--like most birds of prey, on size--generally males are significantly smaller than females.

Thermal imaging sessions have been very successful--even in conditions of bright moonlight when we wouldn't normally try. However there have been a series of evenings with no moonlight recently and catches have been good as a result. One evening in particular saw us break our own record in catching 40 new Skylarks in a couple of hours. To put this in context until recently when a few of us started

using thermal imagers to help catch Skylarks, there were only around 200 caught in the whole of the UK every year!!

One of the most surprising catches however, was in a well grown crop of something where we felt we wouldn't see anything....We did see a bird, caught it and found it was this little beauty......

This is a most unexpected juvenile male Stonechat. A cracking little bird and certainly the first we have caught like this--and we'd be very surprised if anyone else has caught one of these using a thermal imager.

We are hoping to catch more Skylarks and Starlings this week--and we hope a rather pretty finch --more news on all of these later.