We arrived at 7:30, nets up by 8. With nearly every ringing session here so far we've set the nets up in slightly different places. Today we set the Gundry net a little closer to the gate and my 9 meter Ecotone net was on the same length of walkway as last time but again a bit closer to the gate. We later found that the new placing of the nets didn't work as well as previous places because the trees and scrub around were slightly taller, so birds were flying over the nets. Live and learn 😅 The last net, my 6 meter NR net, we put up near the children's seating area of the reserve, as for the past few sessions we've seen a 1st year male Blackbird hopping around that area and we thought we might catch him (we didn't - lil smarty pants)!
All in all it was a slow morning. Out of the total of 8 birds, 6 of them were retraps, including the Robin that I caught on my very first solo session! 😊 I remember debating in my head whether I'd aged it properly but when Simon said he thought it was an age code 4 (born last year or before) I had more confidence that I'd aged it right. Later on, though, we caught a new Robin which was a very obvious adult - very dark inside the bill and no tips on the Greater Coverts whatsoever, so I'm back to doubting myself about the first one 😖 heh..
We used the CD and speaker combo that Ian lent to us (Thank you Ian! 😁) and at first played Blue Tit sounds, which called in two. After checking the nets twice more and not catching any more, Simon suggested trying Bullfinch because he'd seen one while walking down the path towards the Nature Discovery Centre. It didn't bring any in, so we changed it to Long Tailed Tit and we caught two. If it wasn't for the tape luring I don't think we'd have caught much at all this morning. I feel I'm getting confident enough to think about putting a feeder up soon, but I want to go out once more completely on my own without Simon as a helper to make sure.
The overall totals for this morning:
This Wren had 11 "splodges" (I think that's the scientific term.. yes) on its fourth primary feather, which suggests adult. Out of curiosity we looked in the French identification book to see if there are any other ageing methods that it could tell us, and it said that white tips on the under tail feather suggests juvenile, which this Wren also has... hmm... See pics below.
Simon and I had a debate about what the French identification book means when it says "postjuvenile" when it doesn't mention moult. Does it mean anytime after it being a juvenile (so basically adult - 1 year or older)? Or does it mean anytime after postjuvenile moult? The latter means that it could still be a juvenile in it's first year.
We also got a couple of photos of a Long Tailed Tit. The first one had a car in the background so I asked Simon to take another picture with a better background, but the Lotti pooped in my hand for that one... so now I can't decide which photo is better. Anyway, here's both of them 😜
No comments:
Post a Comment