Don't You Just Love It?

When a plan works (for once). Set a net for a Grey Wagtail, catch a Grey Wagtail.

Age and sex please you trainee types, and your reasons.

Also, re-trapped today, Blue Tit P408722, ringed 13-Mar-05, age code 5, making it about 7½ years old.  The oldest known from ringing records was aged 9 years 9 months 2 days (set in 1990)

 Update, OGC detail:

 

And it's a female, that's not a white stripe, just the top of the white throat area. If there was going to be any black male plumage it would have been visible by now.

A picture speaks 1000 words

This picture tells you everything you need to know about today's session.
Seriously, we don't want to talk about it.

Over the Weekend

Saturday saw another early morning to catch migrant warblers at the bay. Although the morning was fruitful for ringing, with 25 birds caught, two early mornings in a row proved too much for one of the party:

Dr Oenanthe takes a break - students eh!

We found this fella in the grass near one of our rides - as the critter was damp and in shade we moved it to base camp where it could get a bit of sun. As it has a massive blob of puss on its side we think it got to our ride by way of one of the days customers.

Edit: We've be reliably informed its a poplar or Eyed hawkmoth

Sunday's weather could be descirbed as "blowing a frickin' hooely", so mist netting was out of the question. We did manage to ring what we assumed would be the last of the tit broods at the stables, only to find a late laying female on eggs. Hey ho!

Picking up Chicks

(News from Monday 2 May)

While the swallows at the stables are just getting under way with egg laying, the breeding season is well underway for site’s blue and great tit populations. At the moment we have 13 boxes dotted around the riding school’s paddocks and this year 10 are in use; six by great tits and four by the blue bitey ones. Several are still on eggs or have very young chicks but we managed to ring a brood of great tits as well as several adults.