Mostly Finches

Will and I were back to his Garstang garden this morning in the hope of another catch of finches as we had on Tuesday. We knew that just a few days later, the turnover of birds using the garden is such that most, if not quite all of today’s birds would be different individuals.

It turned out that the overall numbers caught today were similar to those of four days ago, but in differing proportions. At 0815 it was obvious we would catch Siskins because as we put up our single 60 net across the far side of the garden, many were arriving for an early feed, with our first catch consisting of 9 Siskin and a Robin, with many other Siskins still calling from the overhead alders.

In our 4 hour session we caught 53 birds, 42 new plus 9 recaptures from our own previous ringing sessions here, and an additional 2 Siskins bearing unfamiliar ring numbers, i.e. ringed elsewhere by other ringers. The two Siskins involved are X343298 and T879956, both adult males, and I suspect ringed last winter, but not necessarily in the North West of the UK. Obviously these will be entered on IPMR and the details eventually come to light, but if there is a ringer out there who reads the blog and recognises these numbers, please let me know.

New birds: Siskin 18, Chaffinch 12, Brambling 1, Goldfinch 2, Great-spotted Woodpecker 1, House Sparrow 1, Coal Tit 1, Dunnock 2, Robin 2, Blackbird 2.

Recaptures: Chaffinch 4, Robin 2, Blackbird 2, Siskin 1.

Siskin – adult male “T879956”
Great-spotted Woodpecker
House Sparrow
Blackbird
Brambling – juvenile male
Brambling – juvenile male

The changeable nature of the recent weather (frost and fog today), coupled with the dynamic nature of finch flocks almost certainly accounts for the drop in numbers of feeding Brambling and Chaffinch from a few days ago, with this morning less than 10 Brambling and perhaps 120 Chaffinch, but a rise in the Siskin count to approximately 80 individuals.

A catch of four Robins today was notable and may represent the first signs of birds new to the locality prospecting for, or setting up garden territories. The 3 Blackbirds we caught continue to hold good fat reserves with weights of 105, 112 and 121 grams. An adult male Chaffinch with a wing length of 95mm was a recapture from 13th April 2010 but not in the intervening period, and it may be a larger continental bird.

Robin

Other birds seen from the garden this morning, a female Sparrowhawk, 60 Redwing, 4 Fieldfare, 8 Greenfinch, 4 Collared Dove. So it was very much another morning of finches, but who would ever grumble about that?