Where to start?! Let's look day by day....
Thursday last week, Ben was at his site early on after finishing his night shift. It was quickly apparent that he was on to a good day, with all of his bags full on the first net round. He finished--very tired but very happy with over 70 new birds including mostly warblers of which this stunning Lesser Whitethroat was but one...
Sam, Kev and I then rocked up at 16.00 to find Ben doing a fetching take off of Sleeping Beauty in his tent........nets were opened and sound put on to attract a hirundine roost. We caught steadily until a roost -mainly of Sand Martins gathered of which we caught 15--ending with a superb days total of 114 new birds--Ben's site is really coming good now--more news after this week's visit.
I dropped Sam off at Belvide for his sleep-over! He had a session on Friday with a very reduced set of nets open but still had a great time with 30+ birds including star bird of the day--our first Redstart of the year.....
This is a juvenile bird so it doesn't display the stunning colours of the adult birds because many of the feathers have buff tips at this stage--however, you can see the beautiful orange showing though on the belly.
We had to postpone Saturday because of the rain--but a team assembled on Sunday with our good friend Paul visiting to celebrate his birthday. It was a decent catch of 58 new birds--but the poor weather overnight and the NW wind, I reckon slowed down migration. However, here are a couple of pictures which I hope illustrate a point...
This is an adult Willow Warbler which, like several others this year has already completed it's post breeding feather moult. As a result it sports a rather neat yellow chin and throat merging into a white belly which is better shown in this next picture...
This contrasts sharply with the juveniles at this time of year which have so much yellow underneath they look like canaries!
Although not rare, it's always exciting to catch a Sparrowhawk--they also provide a great opportunity for trainees to learn how to handle them safely!!
This was a juvenile male. The small size is characteristic of a male ( as in most birds of prey males are smaller than females)--and the light yellow eye ( orange in adults), the arrowhead marks on the breast ( lines in adults) and the brown back and wings with buff tips ( plain blue-grey in adults) all point to a juvenile.
And here's why the ringer needs to be careful!! Try to imagine how effective these talons are at killing small birds as they puncture heart/lungs/blood vessels--it's not the beak that does the damage--it's these bad boys.
Gareth was out at his farm early this morning and although he didn't have a big catch, he had quality--particularly in catching his first ever control at this site--icing on the ringer's cake.
The bird was this adult Sedge Warbler--and if you look closely at the ring....
you should be able to make out USE on the top row, and PAR in the middle. This is MUSEUM and PARIS--so this bird has been ringed in France--probably as it passed through en route to Africa ( we'll know when as soon as the data comes back)--and the bird probably breeds somewhere in England and is preparing again to move south. Well done Gareth!
Kev was also out this morning at the Racecourse site, with a small but quality catch of warblers.
What a great effort by many group members!!
More soon.......
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