SO MUCH ACTION----and a Cracker from Kaunas!!!

 Notwithstanding the lock-down, team members have been working within the guidelines and putting on a range of activities to keep our great trainees active and making progress. In summary we have ringed around 300 new birds of around 25 species this week--a remarkable effort! Activities have been of 4 main types:-

Pete and Kev have battled manfully against poor weather conditions ( windy) but have still managed to ring about 120 new Redwings this week-- Pete had now ringed almost 650 Redwings this autumn so far. It just shows what can be achieved with determination and dedication. As well as Redwing, Pete also caught a few Goldcrests and a Blackcap this week. Who knows how many of these birds winter in UK--ringing has shown that most of them have bred in eastern Europe and manage to find sufficient food here to get them through without migrating to north Africa. Pete also caught this stunning male Blackbird:-

You can tell it's a male because it is black--but you can also tell its a first year bird from the black bill, no yellow eye ring and brown outer wing feathers.

Kevin Gareth and Paul have operated at feeding stations this week with the usual (very important for trainees) array of common birds. However, K and G had a good bird this morning in the form of a Cetti's warbler--not a great looker; but a sign of the increasing colonisation of this essentially southern European species. Some early reward for the effort put in to constructing their snazzy new feeding station!!

The Cettis warbler caught this morning

The new feeding station.

Teams have also been out with the thermal imagers on several nights this week with considerable success. We have ringed over 80 Skylarks, which is impressive on it's own, but the big news this week is the arrival of Woodcock in good numbers. We have a breeding population of Woodcock in the UK, but numbers are raised massively in winter by the arrival--usually from mid November of birds from northern Europe and maybe even as far as the Urals. This week we have ringed 8 Woodcock of which one is shown :-

Tonight we added a fourth activity which is really important in a trainees progress--a Starling roost. This requires several important skills as well as extraction, ageing and sexing these superb birds. We also usually catch a few Reed Buntings ( 7 tonight) which can also be challenging to age and sex. We ended up with 18 new Starlings--a suitable number to handle--but without doubt the star bird already had a ring on it, and it was on the bird's left leg so I knew it wasn't one of ours.......................

Here's the bird--an adult male Starling:-

And here are three pictures of the ring:-

You can see this ring says

                                            '' ZOOL. MUS. KAUNAS (ie Zoological Museum of Kaunas)

                                              LITHUANIA

                                                KH 72923

So this bird was ringed in Lithania, and is spending this winter in the UK, at Belvide!! We will get further details when we have put the number through the system and we will report it here.

PS I mentioned the prospect of some pretty finches in my last post--we had to put that off for a while but we hope to have news in a couple of weeks.......