Ordinarily we may well have cancelled the session on Saturday morning as the forecast was iffy to say the least. However, as we were going to be on site anyway for the afternoon's AGM, we decided to give it a go. We were late starting to set up due to a deluge, but once the rain stopped, three of us put up four nets in the reeds & feeders behind the Discovery Hut. We only put up one feeder net rather than the usual two as the brook had burst its bank in one place & overtopped it in another, so was actually running through the second net ride. We were later joined by two new members who had an introduction to ringing, and who will hopefully be joining us again.
We actually caught a few birds, with a nice range of species. We caught two Kingfishers, or rather three but one escaped before we could get to it. It's always nice to be able to show birds to visitors to the reserve, and explain what ringing's all about. Kingfishers are always a favourite, and we were sent some amazing photos taken by visitor Helen Warren.
One of the retraps was a female Blackbird originally ringed on 3/6/24. As an adult, the feathers of the wing were all uniform, and the tail was broad & in good condition.
 |
| Adult female Blackbird |
 |
| Wing of adult Blackbird |
 |
| Tail of adult Blackbird |
We had to close the nets a few times during showers, but on the whole it wasn't as wet as forecast & we were treated to a rather nice rainbow.
Ringed | Retrapped | |
Blackbird | 2 | |
Blue Tit | 2 | |
Chaffinch | 3 | 1 |
Chiffchaff | 1 | |
Dunnock | 1 | 2 |
Greenfinch | 1 | |
Kingfisher | 1 | 1 |
Treecreeper | 1 | |
Wren | 1 | |
10 | 7 |
