Saturday, 9 April 2011

Cabaret and Flammea

It was a better morning at Rossall this morning; mind you it couldn't have been much worse than yesterday! No hiccups at first light put Ian and I in a better frame of mind and when Redpolls were moving at first light we had a hunch we might be in for a good morning. The wind had swung round to the southeast away from the blocking northwesterly of yesterday and we had clear skies.

As I said before from the word go birds were on the move and we had some fairly impressive totals particularly for Lesser Redpoll. Our 'vis' totals included 217 Lesser Redpolls, Brambling, 15 Goldfinch, 2 Tree Pipits, 8 Meadow Pipits, Alba Wag, 7 Linnets, Siskin, 2 Swallows, Sand Martin and 2 Sparrowhawks.

As you will probably have guessed from the title of my blog Redpolls were a feature of the morning and we managed to ring 65 Lesser Redpolls and a stonking 2CY Common (Mealy) Redpoll.

Bags full of Lesser Redpolls!

Lesser Redpoll

Common (Mealy) Redpoll

On the ringing front the Redpolls had a supporting cast of Dunnock, Goldfinch, 2 Chiffchaffs, Wheatear (Greenland) and Blackbird. We also controlled 3 Lesser Redpolls and their ring numbers were T667199, L291656 and R066772. Does anyone know anything about them?

 Wheatear

Given the clear conditions we were surprised to have a few grounded migramts in the form of a third Chiffchaff, male Redstart, Grasshopper Warbler, Willow Warbler and Goldcrest. So all in all it was a cracking morning and thanks to Wendy for the bacon butties!

The forecast for tomorrow is similar, but I doubt we will have a repeat performance of the Redpolls, but we'll be there just in case!

6 comments:

Peter Fearon said...

Awesome mate! We had a good morning too - plenty of BLACA.

L300's are they on your A sequence?

Peter

The Hairy Birder said...

Hello Peter, L300001 - L301000 are on our A sequence. Cheers, Seumus

Peter Fearon said...

Awesome!

That's a pretty good movement for a BLUTI. Woodhams is in between Hightown and Little Crosby in Sefton.

The Hairy Birder said...

Wow, that is a good movement for a BLUTI!

Pete Marsh said...

Hello
The controls do not match any of the sequences we have handled this last month, including yesterday morning's at Heysham. Not as many this morning at Heysham (ringed 25)but we 'lost' a flock of 15 by releasing a singleton at an inopportune moment which 'dragged them off'!

The Hairy Birder said...

Thanks Pete.