Down To Zero

After yet another windy week our one out of seven days a week of ringing turned out to be Saturday. Overnight Friday/Saturday the temperature gauge dived to 0° whereby the Fiat’s heated seat and windscreen proved worth their weight in gold. 

I met Will at 0730 up at Oakenclough and where as I arrived he was already on with the mist nets. The sun stayed hidden behind the horizon as winter gloves made their first appearance. 

A quiet session ensued, highlighted by singles of Redwing and Lesser Redpoll included in our meagre catch of just 13 birds – 4 Chaffinch, 3 Robin and singles of Blackbird, Redwing, Lesser Redpoll, Coal Tit, Wren, and Blue Tit. 

Blackbird

Chaffinch

Lesser Redpoll

Redwing

More frustration followed by our failure to catch birds that we saw but which avoided our nets completely, e.g. Crossbill, Bullfinch, Siskin and Sparrowhawk. 

Loxia curvirostra, the Red Crossbill (North America) or Common Crossbill (Europe) is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae. Crossbills have distinctive mandibles, crossed at the tips, an adaptation enables them to extract seeds from conifer cones and other fruits. Adults are often brightly coloured, with red or orange males and green or yellow females, but there is wide variation in beak size and shape, and call types, leading to different classifications of variants, some of which have been named as subspecies.

   

Two parties of Crossbills, a gang of five then a larger party of 7 or 8 made their way and calling overhead as we watched a number drop into the area of a mist net. 

We failed to catch any but as the breeding season for Crossbills approaches we hope that some will stick around for the next several weeks. Common Crossbills nest very early in the year in English pine plantations, hatching their chicks in February and March to take advantage of the new crop of pine cones. 

Linking today to Eileen's Weekend.

Back soon with more pics, news and photos. Stay cool but stay warm and come back to Another Bird Blog on another day.

Back In The Groove

Did you ever Dear Reader, take a few days out of normal routine to do a spot of DIY? Like painting a room or tidying the garden in readiness for the burgeoning Spring? And did it ever become more expensive, complicated and fraught than you imagined? I know the answer - “Yes”. 

That’s my excuse for not being around to post just lately. Our lounge needed a freshen up whereby the anticipated few days of splashing paint turned into a week or more of hard graft, not least in searching the Internet for rugs, pictures, a smaller TV plus other odds and ends that I didn’t know we needed. 

Now we are almost there, just waiting for an Amazon ceramic vase together with a rosewood display stand via LiChongShan. Then maybe Sue and I will finish the job. 

So on Thursday morning after a promise to check the parcel tracking and with a 9/10 for effort under my belt I motored up to Oakenclough. Here in the Great Outdoors I met up with Andy and Will at 0700 for the long awaited ringing session. It had been two weeks and more. 

The morning was cold with a slight frost and clear skies. Initially we noted a few Chaffinches on the move and a couple of small groups of Siskins. Will lives fairly close by where his regular top ups of the feeders have ensured that some birds, mostly Goldfinches, stayed around through the many wet and wild periods of October to February. 

It came as no surprise when today’s catch of 26 birds showed Goldfinches as the most numerous species of 15 Goldfinch, 5 Long-tailed Tit, 1 Coal Tit, 1 Blue Tit, 1 Chaffinch, 1 Wren, 1 Siskin, 1 Treecreeper. More surprising was just the single Chaffinch in the catch. 

 It was good to meet up with Siskins again, if only the one in the hand. The Siskin is a periodic irruptive species that has been rather scarce in our part of Lancashire this winter, with very few mentions on local forums. Sightings will surely increase very soon when the species migrates from its central and south easterly concentrations towards its Scottish breeding strongholds. The one below is an adult male. 

 

Siskin

  

Chaffinch

Coal Tit

Goldfinch

Here’s a little joke that will ring a few bells for most birders! 

Back soon. I just need to keep watch for the delivery van. 

Linking this weekend to Eileen's Blog and Anni in Texas.

 

Fifty Up

All week we had Friday pencilled in for a trip to Oakenclough where the hillside location a mile or two above Garstang requires a still and preferably sunny day. The Autumn/Winter weather of 2022/23 had kept us away for months. 

Fortunately for us and any birds still around the area, Will had kept the feeding regime going with good numbers of finches in attendance. He confidently predicted a catch of 20 plus birds. 

We met up at 0730 to a cold but fairly bright start. The morning improved, cloud broke and the sun arrived following a spot of drizzle and a rainbow to the north that lit up distant Morecambe Bay.

Will’s prediction was off the mark when we finished at 1130 with 54 birds in the bag. Goldfinches formed the majority of the catch - 37 Goldfinch, 9 Chaffinch, 4 Blue Tit, 3 Coal Tit and a single Lesser Redpoll. 

Chaffinch

Goldfinch

Lesser Redpoll

It wasn’t too obvious that so many Goldfinch were around, they just arrived in fours and fives all morning. We counted about 15/20 Siskins flying over while the Lesser Redpoll seemed to be the only one of their kind. 

Otherwise a quiet morning with a single Grey Wagtail at the water’s edge and a distant Raven. 

Grey Wagtail

Morning Rainbow 

There's more birding, ringing and photos soon here on Another Bird Blog.

Linking this weekend to Eileen's Blogspot and Anni in Texas.