Sand Martins in the Mist

A very early start this morning rounded off a packed two weeks of ringing. Our species of choice this outing was Sand Martin; possibly one of the nicest birds the world has to offer. We've not been to the colony for a year or two so it was nice to be back. Even in the mist!

Like father like son; Billy Whizz and Ti ringing sand martins. At one point Ti

processing sanma quicker than his old man! Ti's ringing is coming on well

handling birds with confidence and is consistent with his wing lengths. He's also

very good at aging and sexing sand martins!

One of 19 birds caught and ringed. We didn't work any

colonies last year due to the rain. 2012 seems to have taken

its toll on the pairs of this site - it contains fewer pairs than

before and we had no retraps from previous years. Several

females had brood patches at a stage that suggested that they

were on second broods. Fingers crossed for a productive 2013.

Aging Sand Martins is pretty straight forward, even with such as low quality

image. The bird on the left is this year's young - note the ginger/buff edging to

the rump and tertials compared to the uniform colour of the adult (right). The

young bird's feathers are also a lot darker than that of the adult. You can't see it

in this image but an adult's feathers look worn; well they were used to fly back

from Africa!