Sunday 27 March 2011

Two Nets Two Species

Ian and I ventured forth to Rossall again this morning and it was a completely different day. The forecasters had got the timing wrong with the weather and at first light we had complete cloud cover with a stiff south-southeasterly wind. In fact the wind was so stiff we could only put two and a half nets up. I say two and a half, because the 'half' was a 30 foot net where we would normally use a 60. It wasn't long before that net came down and we just had two nets up.

The first hour was spent looking at empty nets and gazing up at empty skies! There was no 'vis' at first light, but eventually the Meadow Pipits started to move and we started to catch. We ringed 32 birds in the form of 2 Chiffchaffs and 30 Meadow Pipits.

 Chiffchaff

Meadow Pipit

Grounded migrants were limited to the two Chiffchaffs ringed plus a third bird heard calling away from the nets. 'Vis' consisited of 6 Goldfinches, 210 Meadow Pipits, 2 Alba Wags, 2 Siskin and a Lesser Redpoll. So it was an interesting morning but very different from yesterday.

5 comments:

UEARG said...

Hi, how are you catching all those mipits, we had a go the other day but just had them perching on mistnets and ignoring mealworms at springtraps.

The Hairy Birder said...

We have always used mist nets with a tape lure in both Spring and Autumn. I always find that the net needs to be fairly open with a decent background with the shelf strings fairly close together to create plenty of 'bag'. The other ingredient is a good number of Mipits! The net we were catching them in today was actually in a ditch with a broken hawthorn hedge along both sides of the ditch. Even though the net was fairly enclosed it still worked well. Other nets that have caught this spring have been a little more open, what I would say is a more traditional net set up.

Just to reiterate, I think the background is the important feature. If they have perches to fly to and from, there is a better chance of catching them.

I hope this helps.

Cheers, Seumus

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you had a rough ride mate, in stanley park the was a chiff chaff 3 greater spotted woodpeckers,nuthatchs and treecreepers while at the airport there were 12 medow pipits on the airfield.

Pete Marsh said...

I reckon I could have stayed in bed for another two hours and still caught/seen the same number of birds at Heysham!!!! Had enough by 0900hrs!

Most of the Heysham spring Meadow Pipits seem to be in the bottom shelf of superfines with the mist net betwen the 'obvious' perch (a fence) and the tape (with a bit of background to camouflage the net)

UEARG said...

cheers, had a decent background on one side and tape the other, I guess the weather might have just been too fine, also only had smaller numbers of mipits around (max 20), its just they were really interested in the tape but would fly vertically up and over the net back into the hedge. As I say, think weather was probably the prob...