As promised earlier, here's my second blog of the day. The stilt was quite unexpected therefore deserved a special mention. Anyway, yesterday evening was spent back on the Lulworth Army Ranges where we needed to ring a load more pulli. About 6 broods were ready, mainly blue and great tit plus we found a box with very small Coal tits! Anyone who monitors nest boxes will know that Coal tits in boxes are quite unusual so as you can imagine, we were pretty pleased with that. Here’s a picture of a Blue tit which will probably be fledging this weekend.
Once all the pulli were sorted we turned our attentions to Nightjar. We had to wait a while until it got dark but the wait was worth it. We were trying a very new clearfell which didn’t exist last summer so we weren’t even sure if there were nightjars on it. I set the net complete with a few white tissues in place (white attracts nightjars, plus you can pick them out with your binoculars so it they move it means you got a bird). We didn't have to wait long before a rather fine male jumped into the net. Here he is in all his glory.
We’ll be targeting Nightjars quite a lot over the next few weeks as the ranges are full of them. This gives us a great chance to ring quite a few plus there’s the chance of a control as other ringers in Dorset target Nightjars.
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