Brack - Sat 5 Dec

Thankfully the ongoing deluge paused for Saturday morning. As I type this though, I'm wondering if I'll be swimming to work tomorrow. It was a beautifully clear start to the day, though strangely quiet and the first net round to the feeding station produced only 4 birds. We had also put a line of nets up in Orwin's and this produced a trickle. However, by 10:30 we had still only caught 12 birds. It's never a problem having a slow morning though as we were able to look at the birds carefully and not feel under pressure.
Joining Tina, Andrew, Michael and myself this morning was my colleague's son and budding ornithologist, Archie Hall. Not only did Archie help us release the birds expertly, but he also helped us to identify some of them. He had already spotted his first Redwing on the walk down and half way through the session a large flock of Fieldfares flew over us - another new one for him.

By about 10:30, we started noticing a little more activity around us. Flocks of Starlings appeared with the thrushes, a Great Spotted Woodpecker came through and a Buzzard drifted past. We could also hear Long-tailed Tits along the Dumble and we commented that a flock in the nets was what we needed to boost the day's numbers. Archie really hoped they found the nets too as he'd never had brilliant views of this species, so imagine what it was like when we found 16 of them lined up in the Orwin's nets. And as a small bonus, Archie's first ever Marsh Tit was with them.

We took down soon after this as the wind picked up, finishing on 31 birds.
Pete