Tuesday 15 January 2013

Bangor garden - 15th January 2013

adult male Siskin
Today I did my first 'C' ringing session in Bangor in Matt's garden. We were set by dawn and despite the garden being rather quiet, I was really happy with the catch of 5 Siskin, 4 Blackbird and a Dunnock.
The Siskin was new to the permit, but the most exciting bird was an adult female which was already ringed! It turns out that it was one from Matt's old garden about 700m away from his new garden where Chris Bridge went ringing last year.
2cy male Blackbird
Speaking to Kelvin Jones in the BTO office, we are going to set up a long-term Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) project on breeding Blackbirds within the University grounds. My two ringing sites (including a spot on top of Bangor Mountain) are just outside the study area, so we won't be colour-ringing any. Instead, we are catching this generally in the Winter months, so the vast majority are probably migrants, so we are going to be taking full biometrics on these birds to see if there is any obvious biometric difference between the Winter and Summer population of Blackbirds
More on the actual ringing project when we start it properly...

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