Jim, Alex and I made a pre-Christmas visit to the feeders at Brack, going for the Sunday mainly for my availabilty but also the promise of lighter winds from the east which hopefully would avoid too much wind getting into the feeding area. What we hadn't banked on was a slow moving patch of rain that decided to begin just as we parked up 100m or so down the track from the feeders, and only got worse during setup. We furled nets and went to wait it out in the Landrover, and luckily within around 20 minutes or so it had abated, so we went for round two.
It was a steady morning, mainly dominated by retrap Blue Tits, but a small number of Yellowhammer in the nets was a nice surprise this side of Christmas, with birds usually expected after the new year. The fog that accompanied the rain didn't lift until shortly before we left, which seemed to limit the movement of birds around the site, with little noted round the ringing base, and a dog-leg of nets set in the Orwin's field was empty throughout the morning. Overhead, obscured by thick fog, we could hear birds passing by, which included a distant flock of Pink-footed Goose and unusually, several parties of Wigeon. A Tawny Owl piped up in Orwin's mid-morning, perhaps disturbed from a day roost, or just confused by the lack of visibility!
Totals were (New/Retrap): Blue Tit 2/19, Dunnock 2/2, Great Tit 1/7, Robin, 1/1 and Yellowhammer 8/0.
The oldest bird was a Great Tit ringed in 2020.
Tom
 |
| Fog! |
 |
| A Blue Tit with 4 retained juvenile greater coverts - an unusually high number. (TS) |
No comments:
Post a Comment