Brackenhurst, Wednesday 20 January

Kev, Gary, Jim, Duncan, Kate and Esther very kindly helped to undertake a ringing demonstration for the NTU students at Brackenhurst. Unfortunately, students didn't get much notice about the event but we still had a lot of interest, with many students staying out in the cold with us for a couple of hours!

We had a good steady number of birds, and a nice variety to show the students. Highlights were 16 Yellowhammers (a variety of males and females of different ages, plus plenty of feather mites), a Bullfinch (the twelfth for the site) , a very large Blackbird (probably Scandinavian) and a Siskin (a first for the site!).

We caught 44 birds in total, 20 of which were retraps. Species totals are as follows (new/retrap): Dunnock (1/4), Robin (2/2), Blackbird (2/0), Long-tailed Tit (0/2), Blue Tit (1/0), Great Tit (4/6), Chaffinch (1/1), Siskin (1/0), Bullfinch (1/0) and Yellowhammer (11/5). The best retraps were Yellowhammers from the winters of 2012/13 and 2013/14.

Hopefully we will be doing another demonstration for the Brackenhurst students in February.

Louise