Shetland Redpoll Treats!

Recently back from a week in Shetland and with Redpoll on my mind I had to pop these in.

 I had gone up expecting lots of Common Redpoll, but instead we were treated to this Hornemanns Arctic Redpoll. Referred to as The Snowball it attracted many admirers.

 None of the Redpolls I saw seemed very grey and these two were considered to be the Greenland race rostrata. It would have been interesting to have known the measurements of these birds.

Second brood Barn Owls.

It was great to ring another brood of three Barn Owls recently, and from a site that produced four chicks in June.

The first Lesser Redpolls of the Autumn.

I made my first small catch of Lesser Redpoll recently, one was this smart male.

Hopefully there will be more to follow as we have now had four recoveries from the birds rung last autumn.

Unusual moult in a Sand Martin

On the 20th September we decided to try for the last few hirundines roosting in the local small reedbed, as well as a modest catch of Swallows we caught 2 Sand Martins. One of which was an adult that had undergone a partial moult of the flight feathers.

On both wings P1 & and  P2 had been moulted together with the corresponding PCs, in addition a sole tertial had also been moulted. All the other major flight feathers were old.

Catching up

It's been a while since we last blogged but things have been a bit on the slow side, what with the weather and holidays etc.
So to catch up then,  August saw a total of 228 new birds ringed including 89 Swallow, 11 Reed Warbler, 13 Whitethroat, 32 Blackcap, 10 Chiffchaff and 11 Reed Bunting. Our feeding station in the woods was restarted at the beginning of September and a couple of sessions resulted in 11 Coal Tit, 5 Blue Tit, 19 Great Tit and 7 Nuthatch along with a few retraps, other birds from our area include 2 Sand Martin, 26 Swallow, 2 Reed Warbler, 7 Meadow Pipit, 7 Blackcap and 11 Goldfinch, 141 new birds so far this month.
Let's hope the rain stops before the weekend.

More Terns rung.

Another 7 Common Tern pullus were rung at Watermead this evening. This brings the total to 15 for the year, a great result for the 4 rafts that have been put inplace by the Rangers and paid for by LROS. At least one of the juveniles that we rung two weeks ago was on the wing.

Sand Martins rung.

At last we were able to ring some Sand Martins at one of the walls at Church Farm. We managed to catch 16 including some juveniles.Hopefully we can return soon and improve on last years total of 30.