If At First You Don’t Suceed

The week has been grey, overcast and quite wet; hardly the best weather for photography, birding or ringing. Tuesday’s forecast looked passable and just about OK to continue with the Linnet project, but when Andy and I met up at Pilling where the overcast sky turned first to drizzle and then rain so within the hour we aborted the mission. 

Wednesday was another no-go with rain more or less all day and we began to feel we’d never get there. Thursday dawned slightly better, in fact perfect for a ringing session by way of 100% cloud cover and zero wind. Bryan joined us today from his normal habitat of south west Lancashire where the red-listed Linnet has suffered a similar decline to the Linnet in our own area of north west Lancashire. 

After a number of weeks of leaving the Linnets a supplementary food of millet, nyger and rape to add to the natural of the set-aside it appeared today that the birds have finally begun to take some. That probably accounted for our improved catch of 30 new birds from the approximate count of 200/250 in the immediate area. Again, not a single recapture from previous weeks, and still just the one to show from 180+ ringed during visits October to 19th January. 

Ringing Linnets

 

Field Sheet

We were on the lookout again for any males that showed a greater degree of grey towards the rear of the head and so possible contenders for the forgotten Scottish race of Linnet. There’s one below, a first winter male with a very grey head which also displayed the blotchy beginnings of the red breast of spring and summer. 

Linnet

 

Linnet

Linnet

Shooters were out in force this morning with 8/10 blokes from the six cars parked along the lane. As an aside, and on a point of interest, from many years birding around here, I’ve yet to see a female wildfowler in the midst of the males. Rather like birding, it seems that shooting is a mostly male sanctuary? 

We heard lots of gunfire but the sportsmen returned from the marsh with mostly glum faces and just two pinkies amongst them. The lowly return of just two Pink-footed Geese from the shooters’ combined 40 plus hours of lying in wait in the dark, cold and wet early morning marsh is not so good. Given that several thousand pink-feet flew from the marsh and mostly over the shooters’ heads, the geese and birds in general are much smarter than we think. 

Anyway, thank goodness, the shooting season ends soon. 

Shooting Season

Birders were also out in force this morning on the hunt for the elusive Red-breasted Goose of late and recently spotted White-fronts. We noted more than a couple of cars cruising by, pagers at the ready for news of the target bird. We heard that later in the morning the harlequin escape was spotted near Glasson Dock, on the move but possibly heading back our way. 

Never mind lads and lasses. If at first…………… Alternatively you could try to do some serious birdwatching or a few BTO surveys instead of careering around the countryside on a wild goose chase and adding to all that carbon emission.

Linking today to Eileen's Saturday.