Quality and A Little More Quantity

It was back to Rossall for Craig, Ian and I this morning. The weather wasn't quite as forecasted and we began with 4 oktas clould cover with a very light south-southeasterly wind. As the morning progressed the cloud cover cleared and the wind picked up a little.

It seemed very quiet at first and we thought that we weren't going to catch much, but a male Sparrowhawk in the net soon livened things up. In fact the male Sparrowhawk hit the net with a female Sprawk but she bounced out. Another interesting aspect to the mornings ringing were the group of 8 Long-tailed Tits that we caught. We had a Mipit MP3 playback on the 'Redpoll' net and we saw this group of birds drop from the sky. Of course we thought they would be Mipits but when we got to the net they were Long-tailed Tits. Interestingly, when we released them together they circled round gaining height and headed north! Mega; migration in action. You can't beat a coastal site!

 Sparrowhawk - male

We processed 25 new birds as follows (no recaptures today):

Meadow Pipit - 6
Dunnock - 2
Reed Bunting - 1
Blue Tit - 1
Linnet - 2
Goldfinch - 3
Long-tailed Tit - 9
Sparrowhawk - 1 male

 Dunnock

Goldfinch

Linnet

On the ' vis mig' front it was quiet and we had the following moving south to north; 47 Meadow Pipits, Yellowhammer, 11 Pied Wagtails, 3 Siskins, Reed Bunting, Greenfinch, 2 Lesser Redpolls and Grey Wagtails.

 Meadow Pipit

Grounded migrants were thin on the ground and included 80 Meadow Pipits and a single Goldcrest.

Back at home my moth trap caught it's first moths of the Spring in the form of 3 Hebrew Characters and a single Common Quaker.

 Common Quaker

Hebrew Character

The weather synopsis looks interesting for tomorrow morning, with clear skies and southerly winds overnight, with a rain front moving in from the west before light. Unfortunately it is still only mid-March, but if it was mid-April I would be getting very excited! I still might be up and looking at first light tomorrow though.