Attenborough, Monday 30 April

We made the third of our tryout visits to Attenborough on Monday (Kev, Mick, Duncan & moi). Without Tim's local knowledge I think we maybe missed one of the remaining Grey Heron nests, but there's still one that Mick will go back to in a couple of weeks. That's 11 Herons ringed so far. I know it doesn't sound a lot, but put in the context of the effort to get permissions, organise a team and that only c300 Heron chicks are ringed per annum; it was pretty good effort. However, they do not look to be having a great breeding season with only broods of 1s and 2s being ringed.

This autumn we hope to number the heron nests and ensure they are more accessible. Being able to get round the nests more quickly and making an earlier start in the breeding season, should enable us to get a good few more Heron chicks ringed in 2013. As it's a BTO priority, we'll also be looking to colour ring them under the same scheme as the Besthorpe one.

We also ringed another 12 Cormorant chicks, and that's 18 in total. Again pleased with this as none of us had ringed tree-nesting Cormorants before, but we caught them just right in terms of their growth. Advice on ringing these from the BTO was really useful, and I'm enquiring whether we should also colour ring these as part of another project in the UK.

Finally, a big thanks to Graham Bowden for getting us around in the boat and to Mick for the climbing.

Jim

 (All pics DH)