Saturday 5 March 2011

Ringing at another new location - Anglesey, N.Wales - 5th March 2011

We spent the morning on Anglesey ringing in Mike's garden where we caught 60 birds in the calm morning out of 5 nets.
The aim was to catch Yellowhammer as the garden has a good number of birds feeding in the garden but no real way of being able to predict the flight paths of the birds due to a small number of feeders dotted around. We only managed to catch 1 male which was in the first net round.

This 1st winter Jackdaw was the best bird of the day (hence the title)being ringed by Chris Bridge
11 species in the morning - Dunnock, Robin, Blackbird, Starling, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Chaffinch, Siskin, Jackdaw and Yellowhammer


This was a first winter male siskin. When you initially look at it, it appears very bright, but if you compare it to the adult male bird we caught in Great Manchester on the 27th Feb, the difference is pretty obvious.
Although the catch wasn't massive, I really enjoyed ringing lots of the same species (Blackbird, Blue Tit, Robin mainly) as I was able to practise doing biometrics of each bird and get to grips with ageing birds, which I can admit I still have difficulty with...Practise makes perfect!
A big thanks for Mike for letting us net in his garden and making use cups of tea, as well as Steve and Rachel for the on-going training

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