Brilliant April

I've mentioned in previous posts that April and May tend to be very quiet months as we generally don't get in much ringing as we leave birds to get on with their breeding season. However, this April has been a bit different in that it has been one of the coldest on record--meaning that many birds have still been using our feeding stations and probably leaving their breeding activities until it gets a bit warmer.

So it is that we have had probably our best April on record in terms of both numbers of birds ringed and the range of species. So I thought I would produce a bit of a round up with some pictures of birds not published on the blog so far.

Overall we ringed 518 new birds of 29 species. Within this there have been some real quality birds--ie those for which there are particular conservation issues-such as Yellowhammer, and those which are rarely ringed other than at the nest such as Grey Heron; as well as the many Siskin and Redpoll already reported from Pat's garden in mid Wales.

Yellowhammers have been a feature of ringing this winter at one of our farms, where we have ringed over 100; with 22 ringed in April alone. Along with these on the farm, almost 200 Linnets have been ringed with 126 ringed in April alone. I have posted pictures of these species recently. One interesting feature of ringing at this time of year is catching birds which signal the change of season. So, during a session at the feeder a couple of weeks ago we were catching finches and buntings, when up popped the following warblers:-

This is a Chiffchaff, regularly the first warbler species back in the UK each spring

 

This is a Common Whitethroat--returning from further south in Africa, and it's a male as can be seen by the grey head and slight pink tinge on the breast.

Meanwhile at our other sites a variety of other interesting birds have been ringed.

Jays are really colourful birds, but they are quite aggressive and do take eggs and chicks. You can get a sense of the power of the hooked bill from the picture and from the damage to the ringer's finger.....

Often overlooked because they are so common is the Woodpigeon; but as you can see they are very colourful birds close up.

So April is now over and we have moved into May. The weather is gradually warming up and feeding stations are much quieter as breeding takes over. Gareth got us off to a nice start as I posted last week, and focus now turns very much onto breeding. We had some great news last week that Kevin and son Gareth have taken on a very long-standing Pied Flycatcher nest box scheme near Ludlow and we will be reporting on that in June. The next blog takes us into the breeding birds and a surprise.....