For the second consecutive day, I joined Jez and Carl of NNRG at the North Wheatley orchard in an attempt to catch more Fieldfares. The first catch of the day produced over 50 birds, but the breeze started to pick up and blow the nets. We closed the nets by 11.00 with a catch of just over 70 birds. However, the total number of Fieldfares caught during the two days was just 2 short of 100 birds (98 Fieldfares) which equates to almost 10% of annual UK catch according to Adrian! Many of the other birds caught were continental Blackbirds and we also had some local Robins, Bullfinches and tits.
The two days ringing were a very nice experience with an abundance of birds due to the huge amount of apples and some pears still left on the orchard trees. However, if more apples had been on the ground Adrian anticipated that the catch would have been even higher than that with such ideal conditions (snow, sun and calm weather).
Nabegh
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