I arrived at the Butterfly Reserve at 6:45 and it was already light. I put up four nets, but because I don't have enough poles to put them all up separately, I connected two nets in a row, twice.. if that makes sense! I found I didn't have enough strings when I came to putting up the second double net, but I used the wooden poles in between so I could push them into the ground and that seemed to work as the nets stayed upright :-)
I was on my way back around the reserve after putting all of the nets up and found that the first two nets had caught five birds and I didn't have any bird bags with me yet! Agh! I'm glad I looked at the birds before I went to the car because I noticed I'd caught a Redwing which had it's tongue caught, so I knew to grab a QuickUnpick while I was at the car to cut the net. In that round I also had two Bullfinches (ones that I could ring!), a new Dunnock and the adult Treecreeper that I ringed on the last ringing session.
The Newbury Ringing Group, Simon and Bobbie (BBOWT CT) had arranged this morning to do some access work and widen the rides for the CES site, so after my second round (a Blackbird and a Songthrush) I was joined by Ian who looked for the Firecrest, with no luck, but he did say he had heard a Chiffchaff, so next time I'm out I might play Chiffchaff calls to see if they respond. Jan and Duncan came over as well. Duncan suggested I put on Goldcrest calls because we could hear them all around us. I put the tapes on at about 9:30 and they were calling back to the tape for the whole of the rest of the morning but I didn't catch any.
After everyone had gone to start cutting the rides, I caught a Sparrowhawk! To be honest I was a bit nervous (crapping myself in fact) but I managed to not get got :P After that I caught both Treecreepers I caught last time and a Robin. I left the nets up until midday just in case the Goldcrest wanted to come to the tape, but then a noisy tractor went by with a flail so I thought they'd probably be put off so I took the nets down.
Totals for the morning:
Thought you guys would like to see how camouflaged and pretty a Treecreeper's plumage is :-)
Below is a photo of the Sparrowhawk - a male (grey back). The yellow eye and the contrast in wing colours suggest that it was born last year. I didn't dare try to get him in a good position to get a photo of the wing in case he decided he wanted to sink those talons into me!
And lastly, a photo of the wing of a male Bullfinch, showing four old greater coverts :-) this means that he was born last year.
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