13/03/17 Bowdown

Yet another new site ringed at today! Bowdown Woods! I met up with Ian from BBOWT and Bowdown's warden, Roger on Friday to discuss where would be best to ring and it was agreed that the enclosed area would be the best area - it's more open so more places for nets to be put up, there are feeders hanging in an Oak tree and, best of all, since there's a fence the whole way around the perimeter there'll be less risk of dog walkers making contact with nets!

I got on site at about 6am, filled the seed feeder with Sunflower Seeds and got to work on putting nets up. I found that putting the pegs into the ground was REALLY hard - under the first layer of soil it's just solid rock! I managed to get one net up, Ian's 12 metre one, and tried and struggled to put another one up. I tried two different places and then I gave up. I texted Simon to tell him about my struggles and he reminded me that I had a mallet in my car. By that point, though, after struggling for ages only to feel stupid that I didn't think of the mallet, I decided to just keep it to one net 😋

There were two more obvious places where putting a net up would be beneficial, all around the Oak tree with the feeder on it, but the one net did not disappoint! 3 Nuthatches and 3 Marsh Tits (don't see those everyday!) and 16 birds in total. I heard Chiffchaff calling all morning, and we heard Redpoll (a rattly sounding call).

Jan came to join me and we had a look at my weighing scale, which has a mind of it's own. After trying to calibrate it, it just got worse, so Jan has kindly lent me one of his weighing scales while he takes mine home with him to look at a bit more.

Totals for the morning: 

< Nuthatch!

> The median coverts (or shoulder feathers as I professionally call them) on the Nuthatch here show contrasts, with some blue and some grey. This suggests it was born last year.

 

The colour of the undertail feathers on these two nuthatches tell us what sex these individuals are.

< The pale colouring on the Nuthatch on the left suggests that this is a female.

> The darker ginger colour on the Nuthatch on the right suggests that this is a male.

And below, a beautiful Marsh Tit on the left, and on the right an angry retrap male Great Spotted Woodpecker, which was ringed by Jan as an age code 5 in 2014 and, until today, had not been retrapped since.