Ian and I joined Morecambe Bay Wader Ringing Group today to help with cannon netting some Oystercatchers. It was a successful day and in total we ringed 207 of which 181 were full adults, 9 hatched in 2009 and 17 hatched in 2010.
We also recaptured 10 birds; 9 of which were from Heysham and the other one Richard thinks might possibly be a Grampian Ringing Group bird.
A ringed Oystercatcher waiting to go to the processing team
Processing Oystercatchers
Adult Oystercatcher (told by eye colour)
Richard commented on the 175 birds that we processed that "the weights generally appear to be very good and the number that had not completed their primary moult was very low. This ties in with the low numbers of birds found dead in the bay this winter which are normally of birds that have failed to complete their moult". This would suggest that they have survived the recent cold weather fairly well and have been finding enough food to enable them to complete their moult.
It is looking as though it will be too foggy for ringing on Rawcliffe Moss tomorrow so Ian and I are going to do some work on my new whoosh net ready to attempt to catch some Turnstone over the next few weeks.
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