Weather not kind this week

 It's been a frustrating week with the weather conspiring to either stop any activity or severely reduce success. Early morning rain and frost really hampered Pete's progress with Redwing and he ended the week with a creditable 113 new birds plus a couple of Goldcrest and a Blackbird-testament to his tenacity and effort.

Kevin also put in the effort and managed to squeeze in 3 sessions at the racecourse and 3 at a couple of farms. It's fair to say that at least two of these were a lot of effort for little reward--however he managed a creditable 50 Redwing, 5 Blackbird, 2 each of Starling, Great Tit, Yellowhammer and Fieldfare and 1 each of Dunnock, Wren and Reed Bunting.

We don't have much in the way of pictures from this week--but Kevin has sent a couple from one of his sessions:- first a juvenile male Blackbird

You can see it's a male because it's predominantly black, and juvenile because although it's yellow eye ring is almost complete, it's beak is not fully yellow--and key is that the outer wing feathers are brown because these are the feathers the bird first grew in the nest. It will moult these out into jet black feathers next autumn.

This is a Fieldfare:-

Suffice to say these are simply just stunningly beautiful birds.

Yesterday we trusted the weather forecast ( which hadn't worked earlier in the week!!) and fortunately it paid off as the rain and mizzle cleared enough for us to try again at the Starling roost. Numbers have built up this week and we were pleased to ring 43 new birds plus 6 Reed Buntings and a Redwing. Sadly none of the Starlings were carrying foreign rings but who knows where ours will distribute to next year. We will post details of our Lithuanian control when data comes through.

Here's hoping for some better weather--and what might be a purple patch for lamping as the moon phase and setting times are looking good from the end of next week.