Our first port of call was an owl box that Phil had put up near Scorton. We knew that there were at least two Tawny Owl chicks in it, but we wondered whether the egg that was with the tiny chicks when Phil last looked two weeks ago might have hatched. It hadn't. The two chicks were ringed and we then went to check our Pied Fly boxes in the Hodder Valley.
Tawny Owl chicks
Out of the four pairs of Pied Flycatchers that we have, three broods had just hatched and one pair were still incubating. One of the Pied Fly boxes with 9 eggs in it had hatched all nine! It will be interesting to see if they all survive.
We checked the boxes where we had ringed young last week to monitor progress and all was well. Take a look at the healthy Nuthatches below. There was one box of Great Tits that we didn't ring last week because they looked extremely unhealthy, but this week they were all fighting fit and about to fledge!
We ringed 6 Grreat Tit and 33 Blue Tit chicks. The shot below shows some pulli Blue Tits waiting in a bird bag to be ringed.
3 comments:
The tits in the bag are so adorable! Do you suppose the birds like the rings or not? Do they think of it as 'bling' or something unnattractive?
The owlets look ferocious! How big do they get?
Hello Robin,
I suppose the best way to equate how the ring feels to the bird is to liken it to us wearing a wrist watch. I imagine the birds neither like or dislike the rings, but it enables us to find out a lot of information to assist in their conservation.
The Tawny owlets will get to a size similar to that of your Barred owl.
Cheers,
Seumus
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