Sunday 12 October 2008

A Few More Tree Sparrows, 12th October 2008

Just a quick update from today. Yet another ringing session on Rawcliffe Moss and some more Tree Sparrows. It never ceases to amaze me the turn over of birds that ringing demonstrates. At the moment I have estimated that there are about 90-100 Tree Sparrows using the feeding station at Moss House Farm. So far this week we have ringed 37 Tree Sparrows (10 today) and retrapped a further 7, that makes 44 processed in total. If my estimate of numbers is correct and if the estimate of 90-100 remained constant it would mean that approximately 44% of the flocked are ringed and therefore the retrap rate at a catch would be similar, when the actual retrap rate at the moment is 15%! This demonstrates the turn over of birds within the flock. That's a bit heavy for a Sunday evening!

In addition to the Tree Sparrows we ringed a continental type Blackbird, Robin, 9 Chaffinch and 2 Blue Tits.

The first bird I had this morning in the darkness when I went to collect a bucket of bird food from the barn was a Barn Owl perched on a fence point. A nice start to the day I thought. Wintering wildfowl continue to arrive and I had 100 'Pink-feet' and 9 Whooper Swans.

There was some visible migration until the weather closed in and it went quite misty with a light drizzle. 59 Meadow Pipits moved south along with 17 Skylarks, a handful of alba wags, 4 Swallows, 2 Redwings and 134 Chaffinch.


I haven't any bird pictures from today so I thought you might like to see a picture of my guitar's instead!

1 comment:

Zac Hinchcliffe said...

a red strat...thats what I like to see :)
I enjoy reading this blog very much...appologies for such an old postage comment!

Zac