Before this morning the last time Will and I managed a ringing session on Rawcliffe Moss was 4th September, the in-between time spent waiting for Irene and Katia to clear our shores. Today dawned cold but fine and bright and without the nagging, sometimes vicious wind of the previous ten days, so we hoped for lots of migrant birds previously held up by the bad weather.
The cold air gave us a fairly slow start which gathered momentum so quickly and successfully that by the end of the 6 hour session we had exceeded the magic one hundred by amassing a total of 122 birds of 12 species, 113 new and 9 recaptures, with the highpoint of the morning being the large number of two species in particular on the move south, Meadow Pipit and Chaffinch. New birds: 52 Meadow Pipit, 45 Chaffinch, 7 Goldfinch, and singles of Garden Warbler, Chiffchaff, Jay, Great-spotted Woodpecker, Sparrowhawk, Robin, Blue Tit, Great Tit and Coal Tit.
Our recaptures were 8 recently ringed Goldfinch, all returnees to the Niger feeders, and a Chiffchaff which has hung around the site whilst completing its adult moult.
Whilst we caught both Chaffinches and Meadow Pipits steadily, the peak of catching Chaffinches proved to be between 9am and 10am. There was a noticeable spike in Meadow Pipits numbers between 10am and 11am, in both visual migration and in the numbers we caught which might suggest that the Meadow Pipits had travelled a greater distance or from a wider area than the Chaffinches. Here on the moss we find migrating Meadow Pipits to be more detectable than Chaffinches, and taking this into account the estimate of both species on the move south here this morning is approximately 400 Meadow Pipit and 500 Chaffinch. We noted other finches on the move this morning, mainly 40+ Siskin and 4 + Lesser Redpoll, with small numbers of locally feeding Linnet c30 and Goldfinch c100.
In their different ways a Jay, a Great-spotted Woodpecker or a Sparrowhawk are all capable of drawing a ringer’s blood.
Processing 120 plus birds limited our pure birding somewhat, but we also noted 6+ Reed Bunting, 1 Tree Pipit, 3 Snipe, 1 Yellow Wagtail, 2 Grey Wagtail, 2 Jay, 2 Sparrowhawk, 4 Buzzard and the return of 15 Pink-footed Goose.
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