Birding, Ringing And Broke

Apologies for the shortage of blog posts but just lately but I have been rather busy with non-birding but essential tasks like fixing the garden fence and buying a new PC. 

On the positive side our new brand new set of posts and rails will deter marauding cats and there’s now a solid base from which to secure a mist net pole. 

My minimal IT skills meant that the trailing-wires installation of the new PC was initially less than perfect but I loaded Integrated Population Monitoring Reporter (IPMR), moved 130,000 ringing records at the third attempt and even managed to transfer my favourite blogs into Firefox Favourites. 

So now I’m skint and it’s a blessing that birding costs nothing - well relatively so, unless you’re also a ringer, but that’s another story. 

After keeping a close eye on the weather forecasts Andy and I finally got a bash at Oakenclough on Thursday. We met up at 0730 to a frosty but sunny start and were joined today by Seumus and Jean. 

The ringing office

A five hour session produced 24 birds - pretty slow going but then January/February is both the least productive and the slowest part of the year for catching birds. Our 24 birds were made up of 21 new and 3 recaptures/retraps from previous occasions in 2015. New birds today - 7 Siskin, 5 Goldfinch, 4 Chaffinch, 2 Coal Tit, 2 Blue Tit, 1 Great Tit. The recaptures comprised one each of Goldfinch, Blue Tit and Coal Tit. 

Today’s Siskins gave a good range of ages and both sexes for direct comparison. 

Siskin - adult female

Siskin - adult male

Siskin - second year male

All of the Goldfinches proved to be second years. 

Goldfinch - second year male

With the breeding of most of our birds just weeks away, now is a good time to brush up on bird song , before the dawn chorus becomes too overwhelming as spring migrants arrive to join the resident songsters. There was a good list of species in territorial song this morning – Blackbird, Song Thrush, Mistle Thrush, Wren, Robin, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Coal Tit and Dunnock. 

Blackbird

Non-singing birds today, including those seen or heard flying overhead included Greylag Goose, Cormorant, Great-spotted Woodpecker, Siskin, Starling, Lapwing, Curlew, Chaffinch and Oystercatcher. 

Several small parties of Oystercatchers flew overhead giving their customary “piping” calls. The species breeds close by whereby their apparently random flying to and fro is a prelude to the setting up of nearby breeding territories. 

Oystercatcher

Rich or poor there will be more birds soon. And remember it costs nothing to log in to Another Bird Blog.

Linking today with Eileen's Saturday.