Brackenhurst, Sunday 30 November

A fine, bright sunrise met us this morning at Brackenhurst to herald in St Andrew's Day. We were nine (I thought about holding the AGM!) and included Alex, David Roberts, Duncan, Gary, a resurgent Libby, Nick, Sue, Tom and myself. The weather stayed bright and dry and backed up to a north easterly breeze as forecast. When will it get cold enough for all the trees to shed their leaves? I think we have enough leaf extracting experience now.

Catching was slow at the feeders, but nice to have the first four Yellowhammers of the winter. The weather needs to get harder to bring them in greater numbers. Orwin's again produced a large tit flock with 26 birds in one net round. This included 14 retrapped Long-tailed Tits of which half were from the last two winters. A small sample, but maybe indicative of higher survival rates with very recent milder winters. All the other retraps are from the same time frame.

Captures were (new/retraps) 81(39/42): Blackbird 1/0, Blue Tit 5/5, Chaffinch 9/2, Dunnock 1/1, Goldcrest 0/1, Greater Spotted Woodpecker 1/0, Great Tit 6/17, Long-tailed Tit 0/14, Redwing 7/0, Robin 2/2, Tree Sparrow 1/0, Wren 2/0, Yellowhammer 4/0.

Jim

Great Spotted Woodpecker (Alex Phillips)

Goldcrest (Libby Welbourn)