I'm posting this quite late, I know. I forgot to bring my laptop back home with me after visiting Mum's for Christmas.. D'oh!
Since it's not fresh in my mind I may have forgotten a few bits, but from what I remember it was a bloody cold morning! Very foggy. The Gundry and Ecotone nets were up in the same places as normal but we tried a slightly new angle with the NR net - it didn't catch anything lol.
The first catch included a very awkwardly caught Wren. I spent ages trying to work out which side of the net it had gone in from, which shelf of the net it was in (it was that bad), how many times it had spun, how many layers of net were around its body, I couldn't tell you how many times I had to untangle it's feet to get a better look at possible ways to get it out (I could see no ways)... it was an absolute nightmare. I feel like a failure for doing so, but I cut the net to get it out. When I consider the amount of time spent trying to get it out, the low temperature and the stress on the poor little thing, I'm sure I made the right decision to cut the net.
We caught 5 birds in each of the first two net rounds and after that it was quite slow, with 3 birds being caught for the rest of the morning. The fog was so thick over the lake that we could only see the Coots and Mallards at the bank just in front of us and nothing further than that, so we didn't have much to entertain us at all 😋
I got 2 speakers for Christmas (thank you Simon and Hayley 💞) and bought myself a cheap MP3 player, but these aren't nearly as loud as Ian's CD player/speaker, so we used that instead..! (sorry guys... thank you all the same love you😓💓) It called the Long-Tailed Tit's in on the first round, and the Blue Tits and Great Tits on the second round.
Oh I noticed that I'd ringed a Blackbird on a previous session with the last ring on the string instead of the first... I noticed this when we caught a Blackbird on this session and hoped that it wouldn't be a problem when entering my data into IPMR. It did let me know that I'd made the mistake, but I think it's okay..? I hope it doesn't mess things up for the NRG or the BTO.. 😢
Throughout the morning we'd had to shake some condensation off of the nets, but when we took them in we noticed that some water had FROZEN onto the nets!!! Mental! My hands were numb as I was taking the nets in and the nets were absolutely soaking and they lived on the radiator for a day afterwards...
Left: Juvenile Great Tit showing short old greater coverts and longer new greater coverts
Middle: Coot and fog!
Right: Juvenile male Blackbird
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