Since our last post our outings have been very restricted by the poor weather, so we've only been at our winter roost site for a couple of visits since Xmas. Alot of the thrushes seem to have moved on but the Chaffinch are still roosting, but in smaller numbers, even so another 28 were added to the list including our second ever Control (Y777 anyone?), our first was back in 2005 and originated from Yorkshire. Each winter period we can ring up to 180 birds and since 1999 we've ringed a total of 1870 with just one Control and one Recovery, this bird was reported dead having hit a window 139km away in Poland 2yrs 98 days later; checkout the www.btoringing blogspot for March 2009 for more details. Also we were hoping for some more Bramblings but only managed 3, last year we ended on 17, so I hope there's still a few around by the time we get out again. We retrapped a Long-tailed Tit that turns out to be 3yrs old, last year we didn't catch any from this site at all which is quite worrying as we can have up to 50 over the winter period.
I was able to do a bit of ringing in my garden earlier in the month and caught 5 Brambling with other assorted species, and 2 Fieldfare and 2 Pied Wagtail that were using the snow-cleared area of the lawn to feed on. Now the snow has gone so have the Fieldfare.
