I met up with Andy for our first Sand Martin ringing session of 2018. Like me, Andy had been on holiday, me in Menorca, and he in Turkey.
Birders and ringers are ultra-competitive and as we swapped tales of sunny days his Eleonora’s Falcon was pretty good but I reckon I smashed him with 5 Golden Orioles, a European Roller and a Red-footed Falcon.
There was no such exotica today. It was back to the bread and butter of Cockerham, the piping of Oystercatchers and the steady buzz of Sand Martins all around us as we waited to catch. Last year was very poor for our catches here as the so-called summer kept thwarting our planned visits.
This year the colony is more tightly packed and so far at least, the weather is much better.
We counted 200+ Sand Martins in attendance with most of the occupied nests in the softer strata layer of the quarry face with at least 75 holes in use.
Sand Martin colony
Sand Martin
We caught 68 Sand Martins. The catch was made up of 63 new birds, 3 returns from previous years (all from June 2015) and one bearing a quite old ring. The ring series beginning D350 told us that this bird had been ringed a number of years ago as our own series beginning “Z”, finished last year. We are now on the newer series of rings with a three letter prefix and four numbers.
We also caught a male bearing a Paris Museum ring - “Click the pic” below. After these records are entered on the BTO database Demography Online, we will find in due course find out where both the French ringed and British ringed D350512 Sand Martins visited during their extensive travels.
Paris, French Museum bird ring
Sand Martin
On the way home I checked out the Oystercatcher nest mentioned here on the blog on May 3rd, the day before I set off to Menorca. I really didn’t expect to see the Oyk still sat after the attentions of the local crows. But there she was large as life, with a little vegetation cover, and now hopefully just a day or two until those chicks hatch.
Oystercatcher
Stay tuned. there's more birding soon from Another Bird Blog.
Linking today to Eileen's Saturday Blog.
Linking today to Eileen's Saturday Blog.
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