Thursday 1 September 2011

Pre Birthday Blog

Its me birthday tomorrow so I am hoping that the weather’s good for another ringing session out on the fleet, I rather fancy something like a wryneck as a birthday present. Hopefully the ornithological gods can oblige?
Tuesday morning saw the first proper effort at my new site on the fleet. The weather was good with overcast skies and light winds. Through the morning I got about 70 birds of 18 species which I thought was a good start. Nothing unusual except for a male sparrowhawk which was nicely pocketed which makes a change as they usual end up getting back out of the nets!

Also got a Yellow Wagtail which wasn’t a surprise as over 500 has passed overhead during the morning.

The catch was mainly migrant warblers including Lesser Whitethroat and Garden Warbler. Also at the site but not in the nets were a single Redstart and a Spotted Flycatcher.

The evening was spend catching another 80 or so birds at Abbotsbury with Steve, Fred and Mike who came over to spend the day ringing with us. We were hoping for a large Yellow Wagtail catch but they didn’t play ball so we ended up with a good number of Swallows and Sand Martins and only 6 Yellow Wagtail.

Here’s mike looking rather surprised as he turned around and saw me with the camera!

Woke up early this morning and as expected the wind was blowing from the east. This meant a session in the reeds at Radipole as we are rapidly running out of the time to catch an Aquatic Warbler this year. Surprise surprise I didn’t catch one but between rounds I briefly went down to the visitor centre which got a much rarer bird in Dorset. A juv Caspian Gull! Didn’t have much time to stay and at the time its ID was being debated. About 9am it appeared on the pager as confirmed so I guess the finder looked back at his pictures and decided it was a Caspian Gull. Hopefully it will show up again today and I will get some pictures myself.

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