On Thursday 2nd October a very small team set 6 nets around the reed bed & feeders near the Discovery Hut. It was a very busy session, with a Woodpigeon blundering into a net before we'd finished putting them up. We caught a total 65 birds of 18 species. As we've ringed in the vicinity of the Discovery Hut quite a lot recently, 16 of the birds had been ringed during earlier sessions.
We caught two Meadow Pipits in the reed bed. More than that went in the net, but they're very good at getting out again before we can get to them. Both birds had been hatched this year (age code 3). The birds were aged using the two generations of Greater Coverts present in the wings. Most of the coverts were quite pale edged, these were grown in the nest. One inner covert had been replaced as part of the post-juvenile moult, and this feather was longer & olive-edged. The Tertials also had pale edges & were quite tatty, so these were also the feathers that had been grown in the nest.
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| Meadow Pipit |
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| Wing of Meadow Pipit (age code 3) |
We've done very well for Kingfishers so far this year, & we caught two during this session, one new & one that had been ringed on 3/8/25. The new bird was a female hatched this year, as shown by the large amount of red on the bottom mandible, & the dark brown colouration on the top of the feet.
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| Young female Kingfisher |
We haven't caught many Great Spotted Woodpeckers recently, so it was nice to catch one that had probably been feeding on peanuts in the small woodland feeder. Due to the risk of disease, we don't keep the feeders filled permanently, but just top them up for the few days before a ringing session. They're always very feisty & it's unusual to process one without blood flowing....ours not theirs! This bird had red feathers on the back of its head, which indicates that it's a male & two generations of feathers in the wing, indicating that it was hatched this year (age code 3)
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| Male Great Spotted Woodpecker |
Bird of the day though was a gorgeous Firecrest. They've become more common in England in recent years, but this is only the second ever caught on the Seaton Wetlands, the first having been caught on 5th November 2019. Although there was some orange in the crown stripe, we decided it would have been brighter in a male, & therefore we provisionally sexed this as female. The tail was very pointed, as were the alula feathers, which also had very pale edges, so therefore this appears to be a bird hatched this year (age code 3).
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| Young Female Firecrest |
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| Young female Firecrest |
It had been a very successful morning. Although this wasn't officially a public session, we'd drawn quite a crowd, and they were also very pleased to see the Firecrest.
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| The session turned into a bit of a public demo! |
Ringed | Retrapped | |
Blackbird | 1 | |
Blackcap | 2 | |
Blue Tit | 3 | 5 |
Cetti’s Warbler | 3 | 1 |
Chaffinch | 1 | 2 |
Chiffchaff | 15 | 1 |
Dunnock | 3 | 4 |
Firecrest | 1 | |
Great Spotted Woodpecker | 1 | |
Great Tit | 2 | |
Kingfisher | 1 | 1 |
Long-tailed Tit | 2 | |
Meadow Pipit | 2 | |
Reed Bunting | 3 | |
Robin | 3 | |
Song Thrush | 1 | |
Wood Pigeon | 1 | |
Wren | 5 | 1 |
49 | 16 |
