Mixed Bag

 Group members and friends are continuing to exploit as many opportunities as possible as we prepare for our annual 'main event' at Belvide reservoir. Here are a few snippets from our activities.......

First our friend Roger has a special licence which enables him to check and ring Barn Owl chicks in the many nestboxes that we and others put up in the area.

One of our boxes on BPF had birds in them but when we first checked a couple of weeks ago they were too small. This time they were large enough to ring but still too downy to see the pattern of breast feathers which would have enabled them to be sexed...

Yesterday at another farm, there were three chicks and as you can see they were quite a bit older and had lost almost all their down....

 Staying with BPF, the feeders have become much busier as newly fledged birds--especially Great Tits have found an easy supply of food. This Blue tit seems to be developing well even though it has a deformed 'crossed' bill...

It's quite remarkable how many such deformities we see, with apparently healthy outcomes. I suggest the easy food such as fat balls may have some part to play in their success....

Lots of baby birds means lots of potential food for Sparrowhawks.....This is a bird we originally ringed as a youngster in spring 2021, which we retrapped a couple of days ago.

It's showing the orange eyes which this species develops as it gets older, as opposed to the bright yellow eyes in juveniles. The next picture shows a couple of the needle-sharp talons of this species--lethal weapons when they puncture skin, blood vessels and organs--it's these not the beak, which despatches most prey items.

An adult male Great Spotted Woodpecker was an unexpected catch as we thought we had ringed all the adults coming to the feeder. This picture shows the red patch at the back of the head which males have--plain black in females.

Meanwhile out in mid Wales, Pat is have a bit more variety in his garden catches. here is a female Blackbird showing the brown blotches on a grey breast of the female--very different from the black blotches on a white breast in the Song Thrush.

Finally, this morning dawned damp and cool so I popped down to Belvide to see if there were any Swifts flying low enough to catch. Bingo! I caught 17 before torrential rain stopped play. Here's a Swift showing the plain brown plumage ( which looks black as they hurtle through the air)