If there is such a thing as a recipe for a brilliant day, I think I'm about to give you the ingredients!
Adrienne invited me to join herself, Tony, Kelvin and the Osprey monitors in ringing a simply amazing brood of three Welsh Ospreys! Needless to say, my answer was yes and before I knew it, I had some Ospreys plonked on my lap ready to ring them! What a truly wonderful experience to get so close to birds I have grown up having a special affinity for, being a Brockholes birder. Every year, I scan and scan and scan the horizon waiting for that moment when you get a migrant moving north. This time however, I came to them and loved every moment. They are such well behaved birds and just sit there being amazing!
The two adults kept a close eye on us, giving fantastic views low overhead. I LOVE OSPREYS!
Just when you think the day is over and it can't get much better, I go along with Kelvin and Tony to ring a brood of two Red Kites! This was up a 40ft tree, which Tony fetched down and we ringed them and wing tagged them. A species I have, again, always loved, however this is a species that is missing from my Brockholes list despite many an hour of scanning! I gave Tony a break for a while as I decided to put the birds back up the tree myself. This required a rope-assisted tree climb, followed by an abseil down, which was real fun, despite my depressing lack of upper body strength!
After this, the day was far from over as we headed to the coast to do a Kestrel clutch and before long, we were on the business end of four Kestrel chicks that were kicking away at us. These were colour ringed and hopefully will be resighted once fledged. This is the second time I've handled Kestrel chicks and this time, they were much more fluffy...very cute!
The third new species for me today was this amazing female Fulmar which Tony expertly caught off the nest. Super aggressive species and even smellier if not respected properly! Love my tubenoses!
Tony then abseiled down and ringed 4 Shag chicks followed by Tony and me heading off to try and do a Chough brood, but after an hour of searching for the nest thing tall bracken and very thick bramble, gorse and nettle, we found it and realised it really wasn't as easy to get to as we imagined, so we decided to call it a day and get back in time for the England game...shame Suarez didn't play by the book and continue the theme of today, being incredible!
A very very memorable day! Thank you so much for the invite Adrienne!
1 comment:
What an interesting day you had.
We enjoyed meeting you.
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