A net full of goodies - Caernarfon, Gwynedd - 29th January 2011

male Bullfinch
female Great Spotted Woodpecker
female Nuthatch
Long Tailed Tit
Male Bullfinch (cheeky in hand shot)
male Blackbird
Robin
Great Tit

I enjoyed a wonderful mornings ringing on a farm in Caernarfon today. Steve Dodd invited me to join him and his trainees (Chris Bridge included) to do some ringing of a garden feeding station and scrub using 4 nets.

With the birds mostly being garden birds, there was a mind boggling number of Blue and Great Tit which were the main point of reference for my first ringing 'lesson'. I will post the totals another time, but we certainly must have rung over 100 birds which was pretty fast pace to say the least.

Some birds that fell in the nets, and gave me a rush of adrenaline were Nuthatch, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Long-tailed Tit and my personal highlight of the day were 2 groups of Bullfinch, which were mainly dominated by the stunning males. One of the surprises of the day was just how small the Long-tailed Tits were in hand, as their tail throws you off their true size.

It is going to take some practise getting used to ringing the birds (especially the taking out of the bags as I seemed to really struggle here), but ofcourse practise makes perfect!

Species caught as follows:- Great-spotted Woodpecker, Dunnock, Robin, Blackbird, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Nuthatch, Chaffinch, Bullfinch.

During the erection of the nets, we managed to flush a Woodcock and there was at least 1 Green Woodpecker calling from near by.

A superb day, with thanks going to Steve Dodd and Rachel for inviting me and being patient with my incompetence haha. Also thanks go to Arthur for the hospitality and regular cups of tea, and ofcourse thanks to Mr Chris Bridge

(All photographs were taken with my phone, hence the average quality and strange colours to them)