Lifting Tits! - 12th May 2012

I visited Kane today in Atherton to lift off the adult Blue Tits from their nests whilst they incubate to ring any new birds, as well as identify any colour-ringed birds. We managed to catch all 10 females but only ID'd 3 males as they weren't in the vicinity of the boxes whilst we were present. I will have to make a return visit to catch the males when there are chicks that need to be fed.

This years 'breeding colour-ring' code is Mauve over metal, Mauve over colour. We managed to add a further 8 birds to our project whilst only 2 were already colour-ringed. (close inspection of this, you can even see the stage [3] brood patch!)

It was also nice to see that at least one of the recently ringed Tawny Owls has fledged successfully and is alive and well. Whilst checking the nest site to see if they had fledged, I managed to spot this young chap staring down at us. A successful day! I am now very close to being able to start my dissertation. Once the breeding season is over, I will do a whole blog post about my project and what aims and hypotheses I intend to research. I could well be doing a CES visit tomorrow so a blog post may follow shortly, but if not, my next blog post will be about Kane and my trip to Spain next weekend!