After setting up the nets yesterday evening, MC, TB and I still had to set our alarms extremely early this morning in order to be able to get to the ringing site and have all the nets unfurled by the time the sun began to rise and the CES session officially began - my alarm was set for 03.15!
The net rounds began slowly, producing only a few birds. However by about 06.00 the birds seemed to start moving around the site a bit more and this resulted in more birds being caught. The rounds only got better and better and after 09.00 we caught just over 20 birds in one round!
After CES had finished, we packed up all the nets and then went on a mission to try to catch and ring some Mute Swans. A lot of patience and some tactics were required but we did eventually manage to catch and ring a total of 3 Swans (an unexpected ringing tick for TB and I)!
My highlights from the session were all the young Blue Tits we caught, a male Great Spotted Woodpecker and of course the fun we had trying to entice the Swans towards us so we could catch them!
The totals for the morning are as follows (re-traps are in brackets):
Blue Tit - 8 (5)
Chiffchaff - 1
Dunnock - (1)
Great Spotted Woodpecker - 1
Great Tit - 9
Mute Swan - 3
Reed Warbler - 4 (5)
Robin - 6 (3)
Song Thrush - 2
Wren - 2
Total number of birds caught = 50
Here are some photos from our ringing session:
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| 3J(J) Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) |
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| 3J(J) Robin (Erithacus rubecula) |
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| 6M Great Tit that had a brood patch at stage 5 (see below) |
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| The 6M Great Tit above with its brood patch - very interesting to see! |
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| One of the Mute Swans, prior to release. |
As always, thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget you can
Lovely reading, well done Josie! Fab photos as well �� x
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